Chunghwa Post has postponed the start of its wire transfer service from China, which was scheduled to take effect tomorrow.
Chunghwa Post vice president Huang Shu-chien (黃書建) said yesterday that the post office had received an official notice from China informing it that there might be difficulties in launching the service tomorrow, although the notice did not specify the problem.
Huang said China might need more time to calculate its own costs because it has so many branch offices and covers such a large area.
Chunghwa Post said last week that both sides had completed testing on connections of two different operational systems last month so that money could be remitted to Taiwan via the wire or mail transfer service offered in Chinese post offices and that both sides had agreed to launch the cross-strait service tomorrow.
Huang said the launch had been postponed for at least another week.
At present, money can only be sent to China via Chunghwa Post’s wire or mail transfer services, not remitted from China.
However, to send money to China the exchange of New Taiwan dollars and yuan must first be completed through Citibank in the US. The money is then wired to the designated account in China and the banks there notify the recipient that the money has arrived.
The maximum amount that can be sent to China is US$30,000.
Once the remittance from China service becomes available, the processing time for the transfers is expected to be shortened, though the exchanges will still be carried out by Citibank.
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