E.Sun Commercial Bank (玉山銀行) and Alipay (支付寶) yesterday launched a joint cross-border payment service catering to Chinese tourists, who have grown accustomed to using mobile payments over online-to-offline (O2O) platforms.
Alipay, an affiliate of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴), is the world’s largest mobile payment service provider with 400 million users. It processes more than 120 million transactions daily, accounting for about 80 percent of the market in China.
“In addition to regulations and technology, user behavior is the most important factor affecting the proliferation of new payment methods, and we are happy to make the familiar and convenient service available for Chinese visitors during their stay in Taiwan,” E.Sun Financial president Joseph Huang (黃男州) said at a launch event in Taipei.
“Unlike credit cards or other electronic payments, the new service can be run on smartphones,” Huang said.
“It does not require additional hardware, such as desktop terminals, which should boost consumer and business adoption, especially among night market vendors,” Huang said.
It is predicted that the service is likely to be integrated into point-of-sale (POS) systems at large-scale retailers. Chinese visitors are likely to enjoy slightly more favorable exchange rates using the service compared with banks’ daily rates, he said.
The service is to online today at more than 3,500 stores, including vendors at a number of popular shopping districts and night markets.
The service can also be used where iPass cards (一卡通) are accepted, according to E.Sun Bank.
Huang estimates that the number of stores using the service nationally is likely to exceed 10,000 before the end of next year.
In light of the three decades it took for credit cards to see widespread adoption, the company hopes to see electronic payments account for more than half of the nation’s day-to-day transactions within the next five years, Huang said.
“Once the cross-border O2O infrastructure is established, the service can be rolled out quickly,” he said.
Earlier this month, the banking arms of Yuanta Financial Holding Co (元大金控) and First Financial Holding Co (第一金控) said that they had received regulatory approval to launch their own O2O services in Taiwan.
In Italy’s storied gold-making hubs, jewelers are reworking their designs to trim gold content as they race to blunt the effect of record prices and appeal to shoppers watching their budgets. Gold prices hit a record high on Thursday, surging near US$5,600 an ounce, more than double a year ago as geopolitical concerns and jitters over trade pushed investors toward the safe-haven asset. The rally is putting undue pressure on small artisans as they face mounting demands from customers, including international brands, to produce cheaper items, from signature pieces to wedding rings, according to interviews with four independent jewelers in Italy’s main
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has talked up the benefits of a weaker yen in a campaign speech, adopting a tone at odds with her finance ministry, which has refused to rule out any options to counter excessive foreign exchange volatility. Takaichi later softened her stance, saying she did not have a preference for the yen’s direction. “People say the weak yen is bad right now, but for export industries, it’s a major opportunity,” Takaichi said on Saturday at a rally for Liberal Democratic Party candidate Daishiro Yamagiwa in Kanagawa Prefecture ahead of a snap election on Sunday. “Whether it’s selling food or
CONCERNS: Tech companies investing in AI businesses that purchase their products have raised questions among investors that they are artificially propping up demand Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Saturday said that the company would be participating in OpenAI’s latest funding round, describing it as potentially “the largest investment we’ve ever made.” “We will invest a great deal of money,” Huang told reporters while visiting Taipei. “I believe in OpenAI. The work that they do is incredible. They’re one of the most consequential companies of our time.” Huang did not say exactly how much Nvidia might contribute, but described the investment as “huge.” “Let Sam announce how much he’s going to raise — it’s for him to decide,” Huang said, referring to OpenAI
Nvidia Corp’s negotiations to invest as much as US$100 billion in OpenAI have broken down, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported, exposing a potential rift between two of the most powerful companies in the artificial intelligence (AI) industry. The discussions stalled after some inside Nvidia expressed concerns about the transaction, the WSJ reported, citing unidentified people familiar with the deliberations. OpenAI makes the popular chatbot ChatGPT, while Nvidia dominates the market for AI processors that help develop such software. The companies announced the agreement in September last year, saying at the time that they had signed a letter of intent for a strategic
RSS