The National Credit Card Center (NCCC) is this quarter to launch a device that could accept payments from credit cards and electronic stored-value cards, but when the device would reach merchants depends on fee negotiations with card issuers, NCCC president Lin Tong-liang (林棟樑) said.
The integrated device would deliver added convenience to merchants, who typically use a different device to process the transactions of each payment tool, Lin told the Taipei Times on the sidelines of a financial technology exhibition on Dec. 7.
For instance, Uni-President Enterprises Corp’s (統一企業) 7-Eleven stores use different payment devices to accept iCash (愛金卡), stored-value cards and credit cards, as well as Line Pay or JKo Pay (街口支付), as no card company offers a terminal that can accept more than one type of card, Lin said.
The “all-in-one” payment device would accept credit cards, debit cards and electronic stored-value cards, including EasyCard (悠遊卡), iPass (一卡通), iCash and HappyCash (遠鑫卡), he said.
The NCCC said it would not ask merchants to pay for the new device, as the center aims to promote cashless payment.
However, the center’s hope that card issuers would share the fees has met with resistance during negotiations, especially by issuers of profitable cards who think that the existing devices have served them well, said a manager of the center, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Meanwhile, the new device does not accept electronic payments that require a QR code to be scanned off a customer’s mobile device, the center said.
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