A new Internet shopping mall is opening in China next month that will take payments using the widely circulating China UnionPay Co (中國銀聯) cards for Japanese products, company officials said yesterday.
The e-shopping site “Buy-J.com” will sell gadgets, clothing and cosmetics from about 100 Japanese companies, aiming at ¥4 billion (US$44 million) in sales in the first year, said Ryuichi Kobayashi, spokesman for Sumitomo Mitsui Card Co, a credit card company that has tied up with China UnionPay.
It would be the first deal of its kind that allows settlements with the Chinese cards, and hopes to cash in on growing interest in Japanese electronics goods, fashion and food among Chinese consumers, Kobayashi said.
Some 1.8 billion UnionPay cards — which include both credit and debit functions — have been issued in China and are far more plentiful than credit cards like Visa.
Among those considering opening shop at Buy-J.com are retailer Yodobashi Camera Co, drugstore chain Matsumoto Kiyoshi Co, clothing maker Narumiya International Co and mail-order company Cecile Co, Kobayashi said.
Chinese will be able to buy products through the Net and pay with the cards to have the products shipped to them, said Shota Ko of SBI VeriTrans Co, a Tokyo-based e-commerce company, which will run the site.
When Lika Megreladze was a child, life in her native western Georgian region of Guria revolved around tea. Her mother worked for decades as a scientist at the Soviet Union’s Institute of Tea and Subtropical Crops in the village of Anaseuli, Georgia, perfecting cultivation methods for a Georgian tea industry that supplied the bulk of the vast communist state’s brews. “When I was a child, this was only my mum’s workplace. Only later I realized that it was something big,” she said. Now, the institute lies abandoned. Yellowed papers are strewn around its decaying corridors, and a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin
ELECTRONICS BOOST: A predicted surge in exports would likely be driven by ICT products, exports of which have soared 84.7 percent from a year earlier, DBS said DBS Bank Ltd (星展銀行) yesterday raised its GDP growth forecast for Taiwan this year to 4 percent from 3 percent, citing robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI)-related exports and accelerated shipment activity, which are expected to offset potential headwinds from US tariffs. “Our GDP growth forecast for 2025 is revised up to 4 percent from 3 percent to reflect front-loaded exports and strong AI demand,” Singapore-based DBS senior economist Ma Tieying (馬鐵英) said in an online briefing. Taiwan’s second-quarter performance beat expectations, with GDP growth likely surpassing 5 percent, driven by a 34.1 percent year-on-year increase in exports, Ma said, citing government
UNIFYING OPPOSITION: Numerous companies have registered complaints over the potential levies, bringing together rival automakers in voicing their reservations US President Donald Trump is readying plans for industry-specific tariffs to kick in alongside his country-by-country duties in two weeks, ramping up his push to reshape the US’ standing in the global trading system by penalizing purchases from abroad. Administration officials could release details of Trump’s planned 50 percent duty on copper in the days before they are set to take effect on Friday next week, a person familiar with the matter said. That is the same date Trump’s “reciprocal” levies on products from more than 100 nations are slated to begin. Trump on Tuesday said that he is likely to impose tariffs
HELPING HAND: Approving the sale of H20s could give China the edge it needs to capture market share and become the global standard, a US representative said The US President Donald Trump administration’s decision allowing Nvidia Corp to resume shipments of its H20 artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China risks bolstering Beijing’s military capabilities and expanding its capacity to compete with the US, the head of the US House Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party said. “The H20, which is a cost-effective and powerful AI inference chip, far surpasses China’s indigenous capability and would therefore provide a substantial increase to China’s AI development,” committee chairman John Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican, said on Friday in a letter to US Secretary of
RSS