Credit card spending in Taiwan set a record high for a fifth consecutive year last year, buoyed by the adoption of mobile payments, the increasing popularity of the cards and new marketing programs, the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) said yesterday.
Card payments last month totaled NT$242.2 billion (US$7.88 billion), an increase of 5.21 percent from NT$230.2 billion a year earlier, commission data showed.
Total spending for the whole year was NT$2.88 trillion, up 9.9 percent from 2017’s NT$2.6 trillion, Banking Bureau Deputy Director Wang Li-chun (王立群) told a news conference in Taipei.
Year-on-year growth for last year also set a new high, Wang said.
Card spending has continued to grow after surpassing the NT$2 trillion mark in 2014, indicating Taiwanese consumers have become more willing to use credit cards for daily consumption, insurance policy payments and tax bills, he said.
With last year’s launch of mobile and electronic payment systems, consumers did not need to always carry their credit cards, which made making purchases and payments more convenient and boosted card spending, the commission said.
New marketing programs launched by mobile payment and electronic payment firms in conjunction with credit-card issuers, such as reward points, expanded the business ecosystem, it said.
As of December last year, the number of valid credit cards issued by 34 authorized banks totaled 29.57 million, while the number of cards in circulation was 44.03 million, it added.
At the same time, the number of electronic payment users totaled 4.3 million, a 5.13 percent increase from November last year, while spending totaled NT$30.34 billion, up 6.20 percent, it said.
Line Pay, which launched its electronic payment service in September last year, ranked first in terms of users with more than 1 million, followed by AllPay Financial Information Service Co (歐付寶) with 789,235 and Jkopay Co (街口電子支付) with 661,670, commission data showed.
However, Jkopay was first in terms of consumer spending, with a total of NT$588.28 million, followed by AllPay with NT$66.85 million and Line Pay’s NT$52.58 million, the data showed.
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