Line Pay Money, the electronic payment service offered by LINE Biz+ Taiwan Ltd (連加網路) and iPass Corp (一卡通票證), ranked first in the nation in terms of number of users as of the end of October at 1.87 million, Financial Supervisory Commission data released on Tuesday showed.
The service provided by Jkopay Co (街口電子支付) was second at 1.11 million users, followed by that of AllPay Financial Information Service Co (歐付寶) with 851,417 users, the data showed.
However, transactions handled by Jkopay grew year-on-year to NT$1.12 billion (US$36.7 million) in October, compared with Line Pay Money’s NT$326 million via and AllPay’s NT$150 million, the data showed.
Jkopay also led in terms of transfers, an important function, at NT$801 million in October, followed by Line Pay Money’s NT$398 million and Allpay’s NT$42 million, the data showed.
The commission defines a transaction as being between a consumer and a store, while transfers are between consumers.
In Taiwan, Line Pay Money has fewer merchant partners than Jkopay, iPass senior assistant vice president Wang Jiun-ping (王俊平) said on Tuesday.
As LINE Biz+ Taiwan and iPass are forming partnerships with four regional peers to establish a cross-border payment alliance, more stores are expected to accept Line Pay Money next year, which would drive sales, Wang said.
In addition, LINE Biz+ Taiwan next year plans to partner with telecoms, insurance companies and medical institutions to attract more customers, Wang added.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained