E.Sun Financial Holding Co (玉山金控) yesterday outlined plans to expand the scope of its wallet app by adding more third-party online and mobile payment services.
Before the end of next month, the E.Sun Wallet app could be used to perform QR code payments at three of the four major domestic convenience store chains and 2,000 other stores, including Watson’s Personal Care Stores (Taiwan) Co Ltd (台灣屈臣氏), company president Joseph Huang (黃男州) said at an earnings conference in Taipei, adding that the lender is also in talks with other local payment service providers such as JKOS Pay (街口).
Through integration with E.Sun Wallet, Taiwan’s competing third-party payment apps would have access to the lender’s network of vendors, avoiding the lengthy process of separate negotiations and achieving compatibility between backend systems.
The company said that Far EasTone Telecommunications Co Ltd’s (遠傳電信) friDay Wallet and its own app have their own advantages, despite their similarity.
“Our payment services are designed according to our consumers’ needs, as opposed to Far EasTone’s conglomerate-centric approach,” Huang said.
“About two-thirds of Taiwan’s consumers still pay with cash, and that is the main factor dragging on progress,” Huang said, adding that the solution lies in creating greater value through improved convenience and expanded use.
E.Sun yesterday declined to disclose the number of mobile wallet users it has.
Far EasTone said it has accrued 800,000 friDay Wallet users since its launch in December last year.
Meanwhile, the company is upbeat on earnings growth from its overseas operations and foreign currency loans, which have been helped by funding from the bank’s rapidly growing foreign currency deposits, it said.
The company said that it has spent 660 million yuan (US$9.9 million) to set up a new regional head office in China’s Shenzhen to bolster growth there, while its new bank branch in Tokyo is set to open in October.
The company reported net income in the first half of the year rose 3.8 percent annually to NT$7.5 billion, or earnings per share of NT$0.84.
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New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last