Line Corp, creator of the Line messaging app, yesterday announced plans to set up a preparation office for Line Financial Taiwan Corp (台灣連線金融科技), which is seeking to team up with local lenders to create a digital bank.
Line regional chief Liu I-cheng (劉奕成) announced the plans at a news conference in Taipei, one day after the technology firm agreed to sell a 30 percent stake to two Taiwanese lenders.
“We aim to join hands with local financial institutions to set up Line Bank, a Web-only bank that will offer new financial services and products,” Liu said.
Photo: CNA
Line Financial would not own more than 50 percent of Line Bank and will limit the number of partners to five in keeping with local regulations, he said.
The bank is to take deposits, provide loans, and sell mutual funds and insurance policies, but will not issue credit cards, launch new financial products or establish its own securities units, he said.
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) has indicated room for two Internet-only lenders in the nation and is drafting rules on their requirements and operations so interested parties can file applications later this year and start services by the end of next year.
Existing Line Pay partners might not necessarily have priority to be major shareholders of Line Bank, although they might be more familiar with Line products, Liu said.
Line Pay in August 2015 entered the local e-payment market and now has 3 million users, making it the most popular e-payment platform.
The company’s board on Wednesday approved plans to sell a 19.9 percent stake to Taipei Fubon Commercial Bank (台北富邦銀行) for NT$3.16 billion (US$103.4 million) and a 10 percent stake to Union Bank of Taiwan (聯邦銀行) for NT$1.58 billion. The share sales need regulatory approval.
Line Pay reportedly sought unsuccessfully to sell stakes to Cathay United Bank (國泰世華), CTBC Bank (中信銀行), Taishin International Bank (台新銀行) and E.Sun Commercial Bank (玉山銀行) at much higher prices.
Line Financial is to hire 150 people in fields such as legal compliance, risk management, financial technology and anti-money laundering, Liu said.
In related news, video game developer Soft-World International Corp (智冠) yesterday said its payment arm, Pay2Go Technology Corp (智付寶), has gained regulatory approval to merge with ezPay Taiwan Co (台灣電子支付) through a share swap scheme.
According to the plan, a share in Pay2Go is to be converted to one ezPay Taiwan share and the latter firm will cease to exist, Soft-World said, adding that the company will be called ezPay (簡單付).
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: The chipmaker last month raised its capital spending by 28 percent for this year to NT$32 billion from a previous estimate of NT$25 billion Contract chipmaker Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電子) yesterday launched a new 12-inch fab, tapping into advanced chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) packaging technology to support rising demand for artificial intelligence (AI) devices. Powerchip is to offer interposers, one of three parts in CoWoS packaging technology, with shipments scheduled for the second half of this year, Powerchip chairman Frank Huang (黃崇仁) told reporters on the sidelines of a fab inauguration ceremony in the Tongluo Science Park (銅鑼科學園區) in Miaoli County yesterday. “We are working with customers to supply CoWoS-related business, utilizing part of this new fab’s capacity,” Huang said, adding that Powerchip intended to bridge
Microsoft Corp yesterday said that it would create Thailand’s first data center region to boost cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, promising AI training to more than 100,000 people to develop tech. Bangkok is a key economic player in Southeast Asia, but it has lagged behind Indonesia and Singapore when it comes to the tech industry. Thailand has an “incredible opportunity to build a digital-first, AI-powered future,” Microsoft chairman and chief executive officer Satya Nadella said at an event in Bangkok. Data center regions are physical locations that store computing infrastructure, allowing secure and reliable access to cloud platforms. The global embrace of AI
Qualcomm Inc, the world’s biggest seller of smartphone processors, gave an upbeat forecast for sales and profit in the current period, suggesting demand for handsets is increasing after a two-year slump. Revenue in the three months ended in June will be US$8.8 billion to US$9.6 billion, the company said in a statement Wednesday. Excluding certain items, earnings will be US$2.15 to US$2.35 a share. Analysts had projected sales of US$9.08 billion and earnings of US$2.16 a share. The outlook signals that the smartphone market has begun to bounce back, tracking with Qualcomm’s forecast that demand would gradually recover this year. The San