Use of non-cash payments is becoming more popular, with the penetration rate reaching 37.73 percent in September last year from 26 percent in 2015, the Financial Supervisory Commission said yesterday.
The number is to increase steadily to meet the government’s goal of 52 percent penetration next year, the commission said.
More people and institutions are willing to accept non-cash payments such as credit cards, while an increasing number of payment channels have also helped boost non-cash payment numbers, it said.
Credit card spending in November reached NT$246.6 billion (US$8 billion), down 4.08 percent month-on-month, as an annual shopping spike and insurance payments in October drove up spending to NT$236.1 billion, the commission said.
Credit card spending last year is to hit a record high for a ninth consecutive year, as cumulative spending as of November had reached NT$2.64 trillion, higher than spending of NT$2.62 trillion in the whole of 2017, it said.
The nation’s 34 credit card issuers reported 43.86 million cards in circulation as of November, while the number of valid cards reached 29.42 million, Banking Bureau Deputy Director-General Sherri Chuang (莊琇媛) said.
Over the same period, 4.09 million users made electronic payments, up 8.2 percent month-on-month, commission statistics showed.
As of the end of November, 903,296 users were registered for Line Pay/iPass, surpassing Line Pay for the first time since its launch in September, followed by AllPay Financial Information Service Co Ltd (歐付寶) with 780,990 users and Jkos Pay (街口支付) with 613,223 users, the data showed.
However, payment amounts — which better reflect the popularity of electronic payments — in November sank 4.02 percent from a month earlier to NT$119.59 million, its first decrease since the statistics began being tracked in April last year, affected by reward cancellations, it said.
Transfers between electronic payment accounts held by different entities expanded 12.73 percent to NT$234.6 million month-on-month, the data showed.
EasyCard (悠遊卡) remained the largest store-valued payment tool, with spending totaling NT$5.3 billion, it said.
Other store-valued payment instruments in Taiwan include iPass (一卡通), iCash (愛金卡) and HappyCash (遠鑫卡).
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