Jko Fintech Co (街口金融科技) is scrapping a plan to offer a fixed return for users of its new Tuofu Bao service, as the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) would not budge on the regulations, company chairman Kevin Hu (胡亦嘉) told the Taipei Times by telephone yesterday.
The company still aims to provide a better investment return than offered by a bank’s term deposit, but customers would not be guaranteed a fixed or minimum return, as originally planned, neither would controversial marketing be used to launch the Tuofu Bao service, Hu said.
Tuofu Bao allows users to use the electronic payment service JkoPay to buy a fund managed by Jko Asset Management Co (街口投信).
“We will inform customers that we are confident that the fund will perform well, but we will not make any promises,” Hu said.
As a result, the company would cancel its previous plan to put NT$200 million in a trust account to guarantee the return, he said.
The company is in talks with the regulator over whether it could charge a lower fund administrative fee to attract consumers, Hu said.
Jko Fintech aims to charge a fee of less than 0.1 percent, compared with the average market rate of 1.8 percent, to save customers money and encourage them to use the fund, it said.
Meanwhile, Jkopay Co Ltd (街口支付) yesterday announced that it would partner with several Japanese banks and payment service providers — including Shinsei Bank Ltd’s payment unit Aplus Co, SB Payment Service Corp, Rakuten Bank Ltd and InComm Japan — to introduce its service in Japan.
The Japanese partners would integrate Jkopay with their retail partners, Hu said.
JkoPay users would not need to pay the 1.5 percent fee that banks typically charge credit card users for overseas purchases when shopping in Japan, as the firm would absorb the cost, he said.
Users would also enjoy a better exchange rate than at local banks, which would help the service become competitive, he added.
Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) chairman Barry Lam (林百里) is expected to share his views about the artificial intelligence (AI) industry’s prospects during his speech at the company’s 37th anniversary ceremony, as AI servers have become a new growth engine for the equipment manufacturing service provider. Lam’s speech is much anticipated, as Quanta has risen as one of the world’s major AI server suppliers. The company reported a 30 percent year-on-year growth in consolidated revenue to NT$1.41 trillion (US$43.35 billion) last year, thanks to fast-growing demand for servers, especially those with AI capabilities. The company told investors in November last year that
Intel Corp has named Tasha Chuang (莊蓓瑜) to lead Intel Taiwan in a bid to reinforce relations between the company and its Taiwanese partners. The appointment of Chuang as general manager for Intel Taiwan takes effect on Thursday, the firm said in a statement yesterday. Chuang is to lead her team in Taiwan to pursue product development and sales growth in an effort to reinforce the company’s ties with its partners and clients, Intel said. Chuang was previously in charge of managing Intel’s ties with leading Taiwanese PC brand Asustek Computer Inc (華碩), which included helping Asustek strengthen its global businesses, the company
Taiwanese suppliers to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC, 台積電) are expected to follow the contract chipmaker’s step to invest in the US, but their relocation may be seven to eight years away, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. When asked by opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Niu Hsu-ting (牛煦庭) in the legislature about growing concerns that TSMC’s huge investments in the US will prompt its suppliers to follow suit, Kuo said based on the chipmaker’s current limited production volume, it is unlikely to lead its supply chain to go there for now. “Unless TSMC completes its planned six
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) forecast that its wafer shipments this quarter would grow up to 7 percent sequentially and the factory utilization rate would rise to 75 percent, indicating that customers did not alter their ordering behavior due to the US President Donald Trump’s capricious US tariff policies. However, the uncertainty about US tariffs has weighed on the chipmaker’s business visibility for the second half of this year, UMC chief financial officer Liu Chi-tung (劉啟東) said at an online earnings conference yesterday. “Although the escalating trade tensions and global tariff policies have increased uncertainty in the semiconductor industry, we have not
RSS