Migrant workers are from April to be able to remit their wages at convenience stores, after the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) on Tuesday greenlighted a second set of sandbox rules, FSC Chairman Wellington Koo (顧立雄) said yesterday.
The commission is to send permission letters to EMQ Taiwan (易安聯) and Welldone Co (統振) next month, and the experiment is expected to begin in April, as the two firms need three months to prepare, Koo said.
The firms are to offer employees from Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia remittances to their countries, he said, adding that the companies’ mobile applications and contracts would need to be in the four countries’ languages.
Remittances would be limited to NT$30,000 per transfer, in line with the cap on individual capital transfers in Taiwan, and the agencies would be asked to set a daily cap for remittances to help the FSC oversee their operations, he said.
Clients would be required to first register via apps and submit photographs of a valid Alien Resident Certificate (ARC), Koo said, adding that workers whose ARCs are about to expire cannot take part in the experiment.
To prevent money laundering, clients would be required to register recipients’ names and the nature of their relationship in advance, and migrant workers would still be barred from receiving inward remittances from home, Koo added.
Migrant workers pay a handling fee of NT$400 per remittance and would save at least half by participating in the sandbox experiment, Department of Planning Deputy Director-General Brenda Hu (胡哲華) said.
The two companies are to cooperate with convenience store operators President Chain Store Corp (PCSC, 統一超商), Taiwan FamilyMart Co (全家便利商店), Hi-Life International Co (萊爾富) and OK Mart Co (來來超商) to offer the services, Hu said.
Convenience store staff is to transfer the cash to EMQ Taiwan and Welldone, which would transfer it to the recipients, Hu said.
CherryPay (櫻桃支付), a local fintech firm, also applied for the experiment, but did not gain approval.
The commission told CherryPay to improve risk management and “know your client” procedures before submitting its proposal for further review.
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