Starting on April 1, EasyCard (悠遊卡) holders will be able to use the cards to pay for purchases at more than 10,000 retail stores, the company said yesterday.
“The smartcard payment system in Taiwan has lagged behind Hong Kong and Singapore for many years,” EasyCard Corp (悠遊卡股份有限公司) chairman Sean Lien (連勝文) told a press conference yesterday. “But now we are catching up.”
Launched in 1997, Hong Kong’s Octopus is one of the world’s leading smartcard payment systems. It has more than 2,500 partnering service providers, including operators of public transport, parking, retail, vending and kiosks, schools and leisure facilities, and can be used as access control for residential and commercial buildings.
PHOTO: CNA
More than 20 million Octopus cards and products are in circulation, and the system handles more than 11 million transactions a day, with the total amount exceeding HK$100 million (US$13 million), its Web site says.
Taiwan’s Financial Supervisory Commission gave the green light in January to EasyCard Corp’s application to use the card as an electronic cash card.
Users will be able to store as much as NT$10,000 (US$300) on their EasyCard to pay for transactions below NT$1,000. The daily spending limit will be capped at NT$3,000.
There are currently 17.7 million cards in circulation, with more than 4 million used every day. Major retailers have joined the campaign to promote smartcard payment. Convenience store chains such as 7-Eleven, cosmetics and drugstore chains Watsons and Cosmed (康是美), food and beverage brands Pizza Hut, Mister Donut and Starbucks, as well as Miramar Cinemas (美麗華影城) will be among the first wave of vendors accepting payment via EasyCard.
President Chain Store Corp (統一超商), the operator of 7-Eleven, yesterday said it would offer a two-in-one smartcard that combines its icash card and EasyCard’s functions.
The company allows consumers to use the chip-embedded icash card to store cash to pay for transactions at its 4,800 stores and collect bonus points.
It is the most widely circulated membership card among all convenience store chains, with 8.4 million in circulation.
The new icash/EasyCard should boost icash circulation to 13 million by the end of the year, it said.
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