Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten Inc yesterday launched its first credit card series in Taiwan, with an eye to grabbing a slice of the local market and becoming the nation’s top credit card issuer in the long run.
Rakuten’s credit card issuing subsidiary in Taiwan — Taiwan Rukuten Card Inc (台灣樂天信用卡) — received approval from the Financial Supervisory Commission’s to issue the cards in April last year.
After preparing for more than half a year, the company unveiled a series of credit cards in cooperation with Visa Inc, MasterCard Inc and JCB International Credit Card Co Ltd.
Photo: CNA
“Eyeing the strong market potential in Taiwan, we hope that the total number of credit cards issued will hit the 1 million mark in the next few years,” Taiwan Rakuten Card president Eiji Ishii told a press conference.
The company has also set a long-term goal of becoming the largest credit card issuer in Taiwan, Ishii added.
Ishii said that members of Rakuten Ichiba in Taiwan — Rakuten’s e-commerce platform — reached 3 million at the end of last year and would serve as the main target of its credit cards in the preliminary stage.
Data provided by the commission showed that the total value of credit-card spending in Taiwan reached NT$1.78 trillion in the first 11 months of last year, rising about 8 percent from the same period in 2013, with the full-year amount expected to break the NT$2 trillion mark.
Rakuten is the largest credit card issuer in Japan, with the company receiving an average of 7,000 daily applications since it started issuing credit cards in 2007, company data showed.
Total transaction value using Rakuten credit cards in Japan reached ￥2.6 trillion (US$21.8 billion) in 2013, with the service scope extending from the e-commerce sector to financial services — a business model that the company hopes to duplicate in Taiwan.
In related news, CTBC Bank Co Ltd (中國信託銀行) — the largest credit card issuer in Taiwan — yesterday announced its latest credit card partner — Globalmall Inc (環球購物中心), which has five branches in the nation.
The partnership is the sixth that CTBC Bank has formed with a local department store or shopping mall.
The cooperation with Globalmall follows CTBC Bank’s strategy of issuing co-branded credit cards with department store operators that focus on certain areas of Taiwan, helping the bank to expand its customer base and coverage.
The lender hopes to issue 100,000 credit cards with Globalmall by the end of this year and boost that number to 200,000 within five years in a bid to increase the bank’s transaction fee income.
UNPRECEDENTED PACE: Micron Technology has announced plans to expand manufacturing capabilities with the acquisition of a new chip plant in Miaoli Micron Technology Inc unveiled a newly acquired chip plant in Miaoli County yesterday, as the company expands capacity to meet growing demand for advanced DRAM chips, including high-bandwidth memory chips amid the artificial intelligence boom. The plant in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼), which Micron acquired from Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電) for US$1.8 billion, is expected to make a sizeable capacity contribution to the company from fiscal 2028, the company said in a statement. It would be an extended production site of Micron’s large-scale manufacturing hub in Taichung, the company said. As the global semiconductor industry is racing to reach US$1 trillion
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings Ltd has applied for regulatory approval to acquire the Taiwan operations of Germany-based Delivery Hero SE's Foodpanda in a deal valued at about US$600 million. Grab submitted the filing to the Fair Trade Commission on Friday last week, with the transaction subject to regulatory review and approval, the company said in a statement yesterday. Its independent governance structure would help foster a healthy and competitive market in Taiwan if the deal is approved, Grab said. Grab, which is listed on the NASDAQ, said in the filing that US-based Uber Technologies Inc holds about 13 percent of
Taiwan’s food delivery market could undergo a major shift if Singapore-based Grab Holdings Ltd completes its planned acquisition of Delivery Hero SE’s Foodpanda business in Taiwan, industry experts said. Grab on Monday last week announced it would acquire Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations for US$600 million. The deal is expected to be finalized in the second half of this year, with Grab aiming to complete user migration to its platform by the first half of next year. A duopoly between Uber Eats and Foodpanda dominates Taiwan’s delivery market, a structure that has remained intact since the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) blocked Uber Technologies Inc’s
Memory chip stocks extended their losses yesterday after Alphabet Inc’s Google publicized research that could allow more efficient use of the storage needed for artificial intelligence (AI) development. SK Hynix Inc and Samsung Electronics Co, South Korean leaders in the market, fell more than 6 percent and about 5 percent respectively in Seoul. In the US, Micron Technology Inc, Western Digital Corp and Sandisk Corp slid more than 2 percent in pre-market trading, after they all closed lower on Wednesday. Memory companies have been on a tear in recent months as the rapid development of AI infrastructure triggered a spike in chip
RSS