With financial institutions tightening budgets on marketing to weather the consumer bad-loan storm, Visa International yesterday estimated that credit card consumption would record only single-digit growth this year.
Since the problem of spiraling outstanding debts from credit and cash-advance card usage started to surface in the latter half of last year, banks have gradually adjusted their operational strategies and spent less on marketing campaigns to encourage credit card usage, according to Christopher Clark, general manager of Visa International Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and the Philippines.
Some banks would have to focus on credit risk management this year, he said on the sidelines of a press conference in Taipei.
According to the Financial Supervisory Commission's statistics, credit and cash-advance card consumption last year reached NT$1.64 trillion (US$51 billion).
At a time when banks are turning more conservative in issuing the plastic currency, Visa yesterday launched a new wave of promotions to trumpet the advantages of its debit cards.
Purchases made using debit cards are deducted directly from the cardholders' account, saving them the trouble of waiting for bills and helping them better control their expenditures, said Marco Ma (
As of the end of last year, Visa had issued 2.8 million debit cards, up 56 percent from a year ago. Purchases made using debit cards last year totaled NT$5.6 billion, growing 73 percent year on year, Ma said.
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