Starting today, credit card users will have to think twice before making purchases as banks are raising monthly minimum payments to prevent outstanding debts from snowballing.
The Bankers Association of the ROC (銀行公會) said that from today, cardholders will have to pay 10 percent of each month's new card sales, up from the original 2 percent. The minimum payment for old sales will remain at 2 percent.
Most cardholders will see the change on their bills next month.
Another new scheme taking effect today is tiered interest rates for banks' credit and cash-advance card customers, based on their credit scores.
The Financial Supervisory Commission said 13 credit card issuers would be the first banks to adopt this approach starting today, including Chinatrust Commercial Bank (中國信託商銀), Taishin International Bank (台新銀行) and Citibank Taiwan (花旗銀行).
Chinatrust Commercial will offer five levels of revolving interest rates, ranging between 7.99 percent and 19.49 percent. E.Sun Bank (
Nine cash card issuers will also offer differential interest rates, including Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行), Taipei Fubon Bank (台北富邦銀行) and Taishin International.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day