Bank SinoPac (永豐銀行), the banking arm of SinoPac Financial Holding Co (永豐金控), yesterday launched mobile debit and credit card services, making it the first lender in Taiwan to tap the emerging mobile payment market.
The new service, currently limited to 1,000 customers, allows them to pay for goods and services via their smartphones and tablets as mobile devices gain popularity.
“Bank SinoPac is pleased to lead peers in offering the service” that is already in use in the US, Canada, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Japan, Australia and South Korea, Bank Sinopac’s president Tina Chiang (江威娜) told a media briefing.
The new business may not be a key earnings driver at this point due to regulatory constraints, among other things, but is a trend that no financial institute can afford to ignore, Chiang said.
Global mobile business transactions are expected to jump by a compound rate of 35 percent every year to 2017, suggesting ample payment opportunity for lenders, Chiang said.
At present, the Financial Supervisory Commission caps credit card consumption over mobile devices at NT$50,000 (US$1,665) and payments over mobile debit cards at NT$10,000. The regulator also imposes a quota of 1,000 customers for banks interested in offering mobile payment services.
A survey by Bank SinoPac shows 62 percent of its customers are willing to use the new services on expectations of better speed and convenience.
Yet, 38 percent expressed concerns over transaction safety and 32 percent over complicated procedures, the survey showed.
Other banks including Chinatrust Commercial Bank (中國信託銀行), Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行), Taishin International Bank (台新銀行), Taipei Fubon Commercial Bank (台北富邦銀行), EnTie Commercial Bank (安泰銀行) and Union Bank of Taiwan (聯邦銀行) are expected to unveil their mobile payment services soon.
JITTERS: Nexperia has a 20 percent market share for chips powering simpler features such as window controls, and changing supply chains could take years European carmakers are looking into ways to scratch components made with parts from China, spooked by deepening geopolitical spats playing out through chipmaker Nexperia BV and Beijing’s export controls on rare earths. To protect operations from trade ructions, several automakers are pushing major suppliers to find permanent alternatives to Chinese semiconductors, people familiar with the matter said. The industry is considering broader changes to its supply chain to adapt to shifting geopolitics, Europe’s main suppliers lobby CLEPA head Matthias Zink said. “We had some indications already — questions like: ‘How can you supply me without this dependency on China?’” Zink, who also
The number of Taiwanese working in the US rose to a record high of 137,000 last year, driven largely by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) rapid overseas expansion, according to government data released yesterday. A total of 666,000 Taiwanese nationals were employed abroad last year, an increase of 45,000 from 2023 and the highest level since the COVID-19 pandemic, data from the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) showed. Overseas employment had steadily increased between 2009 and 2019, peaking at 739,000, before plunging to 319,000 in 2021 amid US-China trade tensions, global supply chain shifts, reshoring by Taiwanese companies and
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) received about NT$147 billion (US$4.71 billion) in subsidies from the US, Japanese, German and Chinese governments over the past two years for its global expansion. Financial data compiled by the world’s largest contract chipmaker showed the company secured NT$4.77 billion in subsidies from the governments in the third quarter, bringing the total for the first three quarters of the year to about NT$71.9 billion. Along with the NT$75.16 billion in financial aid TSMC received last year, the chipmaker obtained NT$147 billion in subsidies in almost two years, the data showed. The subsidies received by its subsidiaries —
OUTLOOK: Pat Gelsinger said he did not expect the heavy AI infrastructure investments by the major cloud service providers to cause an AI bubble to burst soon Building a resilient energy supply chain is crucial for Taiwan to develop artificial intelligence (AI) technology and grow its economy, former Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger said yesterday. Gelsinger, now a general partner at the US venture capital firm Playground Global LLC, was asked at a news conference in Taipei about his views on Taiwan’s hardware development and growing concern over an AI bubble. “Today, the greatest issue in Taiwan isn’t even in the software or in architecture. It is energy,” Gelsinger said. “You are not in the position to have a resilient energy supply chain, and that,
RSS