Taipei Fubon Commercial Bank (台北富邦銀行) has launched a money transfer service for mobile devices, Bagel Pay, the nation’s first experimental “regulatory sandbox” application that deploys blockchain technology.
The bank is to conduct the experiment for six months, with the amount of each transfer limited to NT$50,000 (US$1,639), Financial Supervisory Commission Department of Planning Director-General Lin Chih-chi (林志吉) told the Taipei Times by telephone on Monday.
The commission is to monitor the speed of the transfers, their safety, and whether the flow of information and funds proceeds correctly, Lin said.
The bank has teamed up with developer AMIS (帳聯網路科技) to provide the blockchain money transfer service.
They conducted a similar test in the shopping area within National Chengchi University last year with good results, they said.
During the six-month experiment, Taipei Fubon customers can transfer funds to another person or company with an account at the bank or at Taishin International Bank (台新銀行), and vice versa, they said.
Taipei Fubon said it is not charging a handling fee during the experiment and that it would be offering discounts to encourage its customers to use the service.
If the experiment goes smoothly, the bank plans to utilize blockchain technology for other financial services, including lending and cross-border remittances, it said.
Taichung reported the steepest fall in completed home prices among the six special municipalities in the first quarter of this year, data compiled by Taiwan Realty Co (台灣房屋) showed yesterday. From January through last month, the average transaction price for completed homes in Taichung fell 8 percent from a year earlier to NT$299,000 (US$9,483) per ping (3.3m²), said Taiwan Realty, which compiled the data based on the government’s price registration platform. The decline could be attributed to many home buyers choosing relatively affordable used homes to live in themselves, instead of newly built homes in the city’s prime property market, Taiwan Realty
The government yesterday approved applications by Alphabet Inc’s Google to invest NT$27.08 billion (US$859.98 million) in Taiwan, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a statement. The Department of Investment Review approved two investments proposed by Google, with much of the funds to be used for data processing and electronic information supply services, as well as inventory procurement businesses in the semiconductor field, the ministry said. It marks the second consecutive year that Google has applied to increase its investment in Taiwan. Google plans to infuse NT$25.34 billion into Charter Investments Ltd (特許投資顧問) through its Singapore-based subsidiary Fructan Holdings Singapore Pte Ltd, and
JET JUICE: The war on Iran’s secondary effects have seen fuel prices skyrocket, knocking flight schedules down to earth in return as airlines struggle with costs Airline passengers should brace for more irritation in the next few months as carriers worldwide cancel flights and ground planes to cope with stratospheric increases in jet-fuel prices. Dutch flag carrier KLM is the latest company to cut its schedule, saying on Thursday that it would scrap 80 return flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in the coming month. That puts it in the same league as United Airlines Holdings Inc, Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, which have all pruned itineraries to mitigate costs. Global capacity for next month has been reduced by about 3 percentage points, with all
FORESEEABLE CONSEQUENCES: New technology always comes with new innovations by the iniquitous in exploiting users for financial gain or more nefarious ends Artificial intelligence (AI) “agents” say they can save users time and energy by automating tasks, but the growing power of systems such as OpenClaw is putting cybersecurity experts on edge. Powered by a wave of hype, OpenClaw today says it has more than three million users worldwide. The system allows users to create so-called agents, tools based on a large language model (LLM) such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Anthropic PBC’s Claude, that can carry out online tasks. “We’ve moved from an AI you could talk with via a chatbot to an agentic AI, which can take action... the threat and the risks are
RSS