Taiwan Mobile Payment Co (TWMP, 台灣行動支付) yesterday announced that 14 domestic banks have adopted its cloud-based host card emulation (HCE) platform and electronic wallet app.
The platform allows people to store a MasterCard credit card on the Android-exclusive T-Wallet app developed by TWMP.
The locally developed T-Wallet app competes against other HCE services for Android smartphones, such as Samsung Pay and Android Pay, which have yet to be launched in Taiwan.
INTEGRATION
The company said it will supply banks with a software development kit so that they can integrate the platform into their mobile payment apps.
Consumers can digitally store credit cards by taking a photograph of the physical card with the T-Wallet app, after which contactless credit card transactions may be performed with their smartphones at points of sale, the company said.
EASE OF ACCESS
People do not need to apply for a new SIM card or a mobile-specific credit card to use the service, it added.
The global mobile payment market reached a scale of US$450 billion last year, and the figure is expected to jump 37.7 percent to US$650 billion by the end of this year, MasterCard Taiwan executive Eva Chen (陳懿文) told a news conference.
“More than 80 percent of credit cards in circulation in Taiwan can be adapted to HCE,” Chen said, adding that local retailers and merchants are able to meet near-field communication technology hardware requirements to accommodate HCE transactions.
“The new service marks a milestone in Taiwan’s progress toward becoming a cashless nation,” central bank Deputy Governor Yang Chin-long (楊金龍) said.
Yang said that while the central bank is open to the evolution of payment technologies, it does not recognize virtual currencies such as bitcoin.
RECORD SPENDING
The Financial Supervisory Commission’s Banking Bureau’s figures showed that credit card transactions in June set a record with NT$263.5 billion (US$8.31 billion), driven by people’s preference to pay taxes with credit cards.
The bureau said the number of utilized credit cards in the first half rose by more than 1 million to 25.77 million, with total transactions this year likely rising to NT$2.5 trillion from last year’s NT$2.3 trillion.
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