MasterCard International plans to launch a virtual credit card, prepaid card and multi-function card services in a bid to increase card issuance by 51 percent and total transaction volume by 39 percent this year, company executives said yesterday.
MasterCard Taiwan manager Tina Chiang said the firm will issue its prepaid Mondex card, as well as e-commerce transaction cards and multi-function cards within the coming months.
"Along with the development of electronic commerce ... new payment tools, including ... Mondex, virtual cards, business cards and shopping cards will serve to satisfy individual needs," she said.
"Market differentiation has become more obvious, so our multi-function card will be tailored to fit target groups," Chiang said.
MasterCard plans to launch its Mondex debit card within the coming months.
The firm began testing the card in October of last year in a pilot release at an Acer factory north of Taipei. Fubon Commercial Bank is providing banking services for the pilot.
MasterCard will release multi-function cards later this quarter. Users of the cards will be able choose from a combination of debit, credit, stored value and e-commerce payment personalized functions.
Other functions may allow users to pay for public transport fares or public telephone calls.
The firm has already released multi-function cash management cards in Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia.
The new cards will join MasterCard's Maestro debit card. Maestro was launched in August of last year and can be used to pay traffic fines in cooperation with Taipei city.
MasterCard is lagging behind market leader Visa, with a more than 30 percent share of Taiwan's credit card market, compared to Visa's less than 70 percent stake.
"We will be mounting an aggressive marketing campaign this year to increase our share of Taiwan's credit market, which is growing at 30 percent per year," MasterCard member relations director Vicki Liu said.
Mastercard had nearly 33 percent of Taiwan's credit card market in 1999, with 274,000 cards issued, she added.
The firm's marketing strategy is aimed at frequent users of the Internet.
"Expansion of the Internet and e-commerce is driving increasing use of credit ... MasterCard plans to provide many kinds of different Web services," a company official said.
MasterCard will release a virtual card this year.
Customers will be able to use the card for payment of consumer e-commerce transactions and to access e-banking services, the official said.
The firm will begin using US-based HNC Software's Risk Finder product for identifying high risk transactions in Taiwan this year. Risk Finder analyzes risk by comparing transaction types with customer profiles.
An AC Nielsen poll commissioned by MasterCard showed that plastic card use in general had dropped last year to an average 4.4 cards per person, from an average 4.7 cards in 1998.
Eighty-seven percent of respondents said they had ATM bank cash machine cards, with 37 percent saying they had bank-issued credit cards.
A Ministry of Finance (
To many, Tatu City on the outskirts of Nairobi looks like a success. The first city entirely built by a private company to be operational in east Africa, with about 25,000 people living and working there, it accounts for about two-thirds of all foreign investment in Kenya. Its low-tax status has attracted more than 100 businesses including Heineken, coffee brand Dormans, and the biggest call-center and cold-chain transport firms in the region. However, to some local politicians, Tatu City has looked more like a target for extortion. A parade of governors have demanded land worth millions of dollars in exchange
An Indonesian animated movie is smashing regional box office records and could be set for wider success as it prepares to open beyond the Southeast Asian archipelago’s silver screens. Jumbo — a film based on the adventures of main character, Don, a large orphaned Indonesian boy facing bullying at school — last month became the highest-grossing Southeast Asian animated film, raking in more than US$8 million. Released at the end of March to coincide with the Eid holidays after the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, the movie has hit 8 million ticket sales, the third-highest in Indonesian cinema history, Film
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) revenue jumped 48 percent last month, underscoring how electronics firms scrambled to acquire essential components before global tariffs took effect. The main chipmaker for Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp reported monthly sales of NT$349.6 billion (US$11.6 billion). That compares with the average analysts’ estimate for a 38 percent rise in second-quarter revenue. US President Donald Trump’s trade war is prompting economists to retool GDP forecasts worldwide, casting doubt over the outlook for everything from iPhone demand to computing and datacenter construction. However, TSMC — a barometer for global tech spending given its central role in the
Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯), an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designer specializing in server chips, expects revenue to decline this year due to sagging demand for 5-nanometer artificial intelligence (AI) chips from a North America-based major customer, a company executive said yesterday. That would be the first contraction in revenue for Alchip as it has been enjoying strong revenue growth over the past few years, benefiting from cloud-service providers’ moves to reduce dependence on Nvidia Corp’s expensive AI chips by building their own AI accelerator by outsourcing chip design. The 5-nanometer chip was supposed to be a new growth engine as the lifecycle
RSS