HSBC Bank (Taiwan) Ltd (匯豐台灣商銀) aims to double online credit card applications by the end of this year, as digital banking becomes more popular and convenient, retail banking chief Linda Yip (葉清玉) said yesterday.
More than 40 percent of its customers file credit card applications online, Yip said, adding that the lender aims to raise the ratio to 80 percent by year-end.
“The goal is achievable, as many Taiwanese conduct all kinds of banking business over the Internet,” Yip told reporters in Taipei.
Even customers who visit the bank’s 30 brick-and-mortar branches in Taiwan would receive help to file applications online, which would be settled within 24 hours, Yip said.
HSBC employees and customers need to embrace the digital migration, as technology plays an increasingly important role in people’s lives, she said.
The 40 percent penetration rate in Taiwan is the highest globally after HSBC Taiwan launched online applications late last year, thanks to the popularity of smartphones, Yip said.
The lender issued 28,600 credit cards in the first quarter, a 36 percent increase from the same period last year, Yip said, citing Financial Supervisory Commission data.
Total credit card payments rose 23 percent year-on-year to NT$12.7 billion (US$423.62 million) in the January-to-March quarter, while average credit-card spending hit a record NT$13,520 per month, Yip said.
She attributed the improvement to the lender’s strategy to focus on travel-oriented cardholders, who could receive 2.22 percent cash rebates for overseas purchases and 1.22 percent for domestic purchases when using an HSBC credit card.
“We have successfully built customer loyalty by providing simple and easy rewards,” Yip said.
HSBC Taiwan is in the second half of the year to expand its online services to include real-time transactions of foreign stocks and indexed funds in a continued bid to win customers, Yip said.
Meanwhile, the lender is to upgrade its automated teller machines from next month and is to update its logo to make it more recognizable, Yip said, adding that the campaign would cost tens of millions of New Taiwan dollars.
Taiwan’s rapidly aging population is fueling a sharp increase in homes occupied solely by elderly people, a trend that is reshaping the nation’s housing market and social fabric, real-estate brokers said yesterday. About 850,000 residences were occupied by elderly people in the first quarter, including 655,000 that housed only one resident, the Ministry of the Interior said. The figures have nearly doubled from a decade earlier, Great Home Realty Co (大家房屋) said, as people aged 65 and older now make up 20.8 percent of the population. “The so-called silver tsunami represents more than just a demographic shift — it could fundamentally redefine the
The US government on Wednesday sanctioned more than two dozen companies in China, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, including offshoots of a US chip firm, accusing the businesses of providing illicit support to Iran’s military or proxies. The US Department of Commerce included two subsidiaries of US-based chip distributor Arrow Electronics Inc (艾睿電子) on its so-called entity list published on the federal register for facilitating purchases by Iran’s proxies of US tech. Arrow spokesman John Hourigan said that the subsidiaries have been operating in full compliance with US export control regulations and his company is discussing with the US Bureau of
Businesses across the global semiconductor supply chain are bracing themselves for disruptions from an escalating trade war, after China imposed curbs on rare earth mineral exports and the US responded with additional tariffs and restrictions on software sales to the Asian nation. China’s restrictions, the most targeted move yet to limit supplies of rare earth materials, represent the first major attempt by Beijing to exercise long-arm jurisdiction over foreign companies to target the semiconductor industry, threatening to stall the chips powering the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. They prompted US President Donald Trump on Friday to announce that he would impose an additional
China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空) said it expects peak season effects in the fourth quarter to continue to boost demand for passenger flights and cargo services, after reporting its second-highest-ever September sales on Monday. The carrier said it posted NT$15.88 billion (US$517 million) in consolidated sales last month, trailing only September last year’s NT$16.01 billion. Last month, CAL generated NT$8.77 billion from its passenger flights and NT$5.37 billion from cargo services, it said. In the first nine months of this year, the carrier posted NT$154.93 billion in cumulative sales, up 2.62 percent from a year earlier, marking the second-highest level for the January-September
RSS