Cash advance cards are losing importance in the local financial market, with outstanding debt dropping to a new low last year, Financial Supervisory Commission’s (FSC) data showed.
By the end of last year, 384,771 valid cash advance cards had been issued by 16 local banks, with combined outstanding loans falling 7.97 percent to NT$17.35 billion (US$564 million), from NT$18.85 billion at the end of 2017, the lowest level since the commission started collecting the data in 2004.
The non-performing loans (NPL) ratio for the cards and bad loans written off continued to decline last year to 0.885 percent and NT$403.76 million respectively, the data showed.
In comparison, 29.57 million valid credit cards had been issued by 34 banks and total card spending reached NT$242.18 billion by the end of last year, the data showed.
The number of valid credit cards is 76 times that of cash advance cards, so cash-advance cards have clearly lost importance, Banking Bureau Deputy Director Wang Li-chun (王立群) told the Taipei Times on Feb. 1.
RESTRICTIONS
The cash card business has seen a continued decline since the commission tightened regulations in 2005, identifying the cards as high-risk, Wang said, adding that no bank has actively offered new cash cards or promoted such services since then.
The cash card loan balance reached a peak of NT$298.4 billion by the end of 2005, but had fallen to less than one-17th of that peak by the end of last year, Wang said.
The number of cash card issuers also fell from 31 in 2005 to 16 last year, he added.
KGI Bank (凱基銀行), which introduced the nation’s first cash card, “George & Mary,” in 1999, holds 80 percent of the market, followed by Taishin International Bank (台新銀行) and CTBC Bank (中信銀行), the data showed.
CREDIT
KGI said it does not promote its cash cards anymore, unless clients ask about it.
“Clients still have the need for small loans and cash for emergencies, but we now provide revolving credit to replace cash cards,” the bank said, adding that the maximum credit amount is NT$1 million.
First Commercial Bank (第一銀行), Bank SinoPac (永豐銀行) and CTBC Bank offer similar revolving credit products.
Taiwan’s rapidly aging population is fueling a sharp increase in homes occupied solely by elderly people, a trend that is reshaping the nation’s housing market and social fabric, real-estate brokers said yesterday. About 850,000 residences were occupied by elderly people in the first quarter, including 655,000 that housed only one resident, the Ministry of the Interior said. The figures have nearly doubled from a decade earlier, Great Home Realty Co (大家房屋) said, as people aged 65 and older now make up 20.8 percent of the population. “The so-called silver tsunami represents more than just a demographic shift — it could fundamentally redefine the
The US government on Wednesday sanctioned more than two dozen companies in China, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, including offshoots of a US chip firm, accusing the businesses of providing illicit support to Iran’s military or proxies. The US Department of Commerce included two subsidiaries of US-based chip distributor Arrow Electronics Inc (艾睿電子) on its so-called entity list published on the federal register for facilitating purchases by Iran’s proxies of US tech. Arrow spokesman John Hourigan said that the subsidiaries have been operating in full compliance with US export control regulations and his company is discussing with the US Bureau of
Businesses across the global semiconductor supply chain are bracing themselves for disruptions from an escalating trade war, after China imposed curbs on rare earth mineral exports and the US responded with additional tariffs and restrictions on software sales to the Asian nation. China’s restrictions, the most targeted move yet to limit supplies of rare earth materials, represent the first major attempt by Beijing to exercise long-arm jurisdiction over foreign companies to target the semiconductor industry, threatening to stall the chips powering the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. They prompted US President Donald Trump on Friday to announce that he would impose an additional
China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空) said it expects peak season effects in the fourth quarter to continue to boost demand for passenger flights and cargo services, after reporting its second-highest-ever September sales on Monday. The carrier said it posted NT$15.88 billion (US$517 million) in consolidated sales last month, trailing only September last year’s NT$16.01 billion. Last month, CAL generated NT$8.77 billion from its passenger flights and NT$5.37 billion from cargo services, it said. In the first nine months of this year, the carrier posted NT$154.93 billion in cumulative sales, up 2.62 percent from a year earlier, marking the second-highest level for the January-September
RSS