With the nation's personal credit-card market becoming saturated, MasterCard International sees commercial payments by small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) as a market segment with great potential.
Citing statistics for the Asia-Pacific region, including Taiwan, China, Japan and South Korea, MasterCard said 59.8 percent of the US$700 billion exchanged in business-to-business transactions consists of cash and checks.
This proportion is believed to be bigger in Taiwan, a massive but underdeveloped market which the company is eager to tap, Peter Gordon, MasterCard's vice president for commercial payment solutions, told reporters yesterday.
Operating in a similar fashion to personal credit cards, commercial cards allow cardholders -- who are owners or employees of businesses -- to make payments when purchasing office supplies and stationery or purchasing business trips and meals.
This saves businesses the trouble of making advances and applying for reimbursement, and can help corporations and the public sector lower costs, streamline procurement processes, reduce paperwork and increase operational efficiency, according to MasterCard.
Moreover, it is a lucrative business for card issuers, Gordon said, citing MasterCard's global figures showing that an average of US$6,664 per year is spent on commercial cards, four times that spent on personal cards.
Banks can design loyalty programs to build better ties with their corporate customers, he added.
Visa International is also upbeat about the under-penetrated market.
"The transaction volume made through commercial cards shows strong growth. The opportunity is huge," said Christopher Clark, Visa's country manager in Taiwan.
By cooperating with 16 banks to target large-sized enterprises and SMEs, Visa had issued 17,000 commercial cards in Taiwan by the end of last month, generating over NT$5.3 billion in transactions in the year ending March, or 150 percent growth year-on-year, Clark said.
While the idea might be new to some business operators, American Express Bank Ltd took the lead by issuing the nation's first "corporate card" in 1989, targeting big corporations and foreign companies, followed by the issuing of a "business card" in 2000 to serve SMEs, said Kelly Yang (
Although the market development sounds enticing, an academic pointed out that the lack of a rating reference system on SMEs would make banking institutions bear higher risks.
"Card issuers have less access to understanding the nature of a company, whose success or failure is closely related to the economy," said Thomas Lee (李桐豪), professor of money and banking at National Chengchi University.
But if a scoring system is established, banks instead would garner better information about how their corporate customers spend money with the help of commercial cards, he said.
WEAKER ACTIVITY: The sharpest deterioration was seen in the electronics and optical components sector, with the production index falling 13.2 points to 44.5 Taiwan’s manufacturing sector last month contracted for a second consecutive month, with the purchasing managers’ index (PMI) slipping to 48, reflecting ongoing caution over trade uncertainties, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The decline reflects growing caution among companies amid uncertainty surrounding US tariffs, semiconductor duties and automotive import levies, and it is also likely linked to fading front-loading activity, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said. “Some clients have started shifting orders to Southeast Asian countries where tariff regimes are already clear,” Lien told a news conference. Firms across the supply chain are also lowering stock levels to mitigate
IN THE AIR: While most companies said they were committed to North American operations, some added that production and costs would depend on the outcome of a US trade probe Leading local contract electronics makers Wistron Corp (緯創), Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), Inventec Corp (英業達) and Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶) are to maintain their North American expansion plans, despite Washington’s 20 percent tariff on Taiwanese goods. Wistron said it has long maintained a presence in the US, while distributing production across Taiwan, North America, Southeast Asia and Europe. The company is in talks with customers to align capacity with their site preferences, a company official told the Taipei Times by telephone on Friday. The company is still in talks with clients over who would bear the tariff costs, with the outcome pending further
Six Taiwanese companies, including contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), made the 2025 Fortune Global 500 list of the world’s largest firms by revenue. In a report published by New York-based Fortune magazine on Tuesday, Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), ranked highest among Taiwanese firms, placing 28th with revenue of US$213.69 billion. Up 60 spots from last year, TSMC rose to No. 126 with US$90.16 billion in revenue, followed by Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) at 348th, Pegatron Corp (和碩) at 461st, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) at 494th and Wistron Corp (緯創) at
NEGOTIATIONS: Semiconductors play an outsized role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development and are a major driver of the Taiwan-US trade imbalance With US President Donald Trump threatening to impose tariffs on semiconductors, Taiwan is expected to face a significant challenge, as information and communications technology (ICT) products account for more than 70 percent of its exports to the US, Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said on Friday. Compared with other countries, semiconductors play a disproportionately large role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development, Lien said. As the sixth-largest contributor to the US trade deficit, Taiwan recorded a US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US last year — up from US$47.8 billion in 2023 — driven by strong