Blockchain technology is the key to accelerating growth in electronic payments in Taiwan, an investee of Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控) said last week, while urging the government to fast-track implementation of a regulatory sandbox.
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) has set the goal of increasing the use of electronic payments to 52 percent of total transactions by 2020, while lowering the reliance on hard currency, which currently accounts for 80 percent of all purchases.
The slow adoption of electronic payments in Taiwan is primarily caused by widespread fragmentation in the field populated by a growing number of competing solutions that are not readily compatible, while none have garnered enough users to reach critical mass, blockchain developer AMIS (帳聯網路科技) chief executive officer Alex Liu (劉世偉) said on Thursday.
Photo courtesy of Clavis Communications Consultants Co
“Blockchain is a value-exchange protocol that serves as middleware bridging between different systems and achieves compatibility between different mobile payment platforms and financial systems, making mobile payments as ubiquitous as e-mail,” Liu said, adding that the company is built from Taiwan’s deep talent pool.
The dominant messaging service WeChat (微信) has propelled rapid adoption of mobile payments in China, Liu said, adding that Taiwan could close the gap with blockchain middleware.
Ant Financial Services Group (螞蟻金服), a payment affiliate of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴), has announced plans to integrate blockchain, which would enable China — which has already established critical mass in mobile payments — to make a tremendous leap, Liu said.
However, the slow pace of regulatory changes have continued to impede developers, and Taiwan might lose its first-mover advantage in the blockchain space, Liu said, adding that fintech is a technology-heavy, capital-light field in which Taiwan could do very well.
While the FSC last month submitted for legislative review a draft bill for a “regulatory sandbox,” blockchain investors remained concerned about the time frame required for the Legislative Yuan to complete the approval process.
Some investors said the draft bill is lacking in focus, and fintech developers remain hesitant due to fear of plans encountering undeterminable regulatory boundaries.
Others urged the government to make adjustments after the bill’s implementation, saying that it is not feasible to achieve an optimal balance between regulatory compliance and create an environment that fosters innovation on the first attempt.
Liu said that there is a lack of urgency in the government’s higher levels, and that regulatory changes should not be limited to the financial sector, given the boundless potential of blockchain and other new technologies to transform many industries.
Liu also questioned the reasons behind AMIS’s exclusion from talks between the government-run Financial Information Co (財金資訊公司) and domestic banks about adopting blockchain technology, while IBM Corp joined in the closed-door discussions.
Taiwan has arguably not been “punching above its weight” in the global market since the heyday of the PC industry, and has missed out on opportunities in the “Web 1.0” and mobile eras, Liu said.
“That may change as blockchain paves the way for a transformation from an Internet of information to an Internet of value,” Liu said during an address at an event promoting the new Etherium Enterprise Alliance, of which AMIS is a launching member.
The alliance develops Ethereum, an open-source blockchain platform that enables automated “smart” contracts between parties and underpins “ether,” the second-highest valued cryptocurrency after bitcoin.
At the event, Fubon Financial demonstrated its blockchain-based electronic wallet app, and said that the company has a “smart” contract-enabled flight delay insurance product as well as a robot advisory app that are both ready to participate in the regulatory sandbox.
PRICE HIKES: The war in the Middle East would not significantly disrupt supply in the short term, but semiconductor companies are facing price surges for materials Taiwan’s semiconductor companies are not facing imminent supply disruptions of essential chemicals or raw materials due to the war in the Middle East, but surges in material costs loom large, industry association SEMI Taiwan said yesterday. The association’s comments came amid growing concerns that supplies of helium and other key raw materials used in semiconductor production could become a choke point after Qatar shut down its liquefied natural gas (LNG) production and helium output earlier this month due to the conflict. Qatar is the second-largest LNG supplier in the world and accounts for about 33 percent of global helium output. Helium is
DOMESTIC COMPONENT: Huang identified several Taiwanese partners to be a key part of Nvidia’s Vera Rubin supply chain, including Asustek, Hon Hai and Wistron Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), addressing crowds at the company’s biggest annual event, unveiled a variety of new products while predicting that its flagship artificial intelligence (AI) processors would help generate US$1 trillion in sales through next year. During a two-and-a-half-hour keynote address, Huang announced plans to push deeper into central processing units (CPUs) — Intel Corp’s home turf — and introduced semiconductors made with technology acquired from start-up Groq Inc. The company even said it was developing chips for data centers in outer space. At the heart of Huang’s speech was the message that demand for computing power
OPTIMISTIC: Inflation still has a chance of remaining below the central bank’s 2 percent alert level, as Taiwan’s economy is resilient with healthy exports, the NDC minister said Taiwan’s inflation could exceed 2 percent this year if oil prices continue to surge amid escalating tensions in the Middle East, prompting the government to reassess its economic outlook, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. DGBAS Minister Chen Shu-tzu (陳淑姿) told lawmakers at a meeting of the legislature’s Finance Committee that the agency’s earlier growth forecast of 1.68 percent in the consumer price index (CPI) and 7.71 percent for GDP this year did not account for the ongoing Middle East conflict and would need revision, if tensions persist. The previous forecast assumed an average international crude price of
ELECTRIC DREAMS: Smart cities would use ‘virtual power plants,’ which integrate idle electricity use from households, businesses and factories, Asustek said Asustek Computer Inc (華碩) yesterday showcased key components of its artificial intelligence (AI)-driven smart city initiatives at a trade show in Taipei, eyeing new business opportunities as cities develop sovereign AI infrastructure. Advances in generative, multimodal and physical AI are driving cities toward a new phase of “sovereign AI,” Asustek cochief executive officer Samson Hu (胡書賓) told reporters on the sidelines of the Smart City Summit and Expo at Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center’s Hall 2. The company showcased its “AI City” framework, which comprises three layers — computing infrastructure centered on AI servers, AI models and a platform layer for data processing
RSS