Line Bank Taiwan Ltd (連線商業銀行), the second Internet-only bank in the nation, is to begin trial operations on Wednesday, before an official launch next month, Line Bank general manager Morris Huang (黃以孟) said on Friday.
The bank has completed several rounds of tests, such as stress tests, integration tests and user tests, and the bank is well-prepared to open to the public, Huang said.
The bank also signed an agreement with Central Deposit Insurance Corp (CDIC, 中央存保) to provide deposit insurance to its clients.
Photo: Lee Chin-hui, Taipei Times
Huang said that 700 employees of the three Taiwanese subsidiaries of Line Corp would be offered services in the trial.
As a Web-only bank, it has placed much emphasis on cybersecurity, Huang said.
The bank would initially offer debit card services and personal loans, but more preparations would be needed before credit card services could be offered, he said.
Once it offers services to the public, the bank would start with a promotion campaign, but it would not initially engage in price competition to achieve a certain market share, Huang said.
Line Financial Taiwan Corp (台灣連線金融科技), which owns 49.9 percent of Line Bank, last quarter started a similar Internet-only bank in Thailand — Line Bk — which has been faring as expected, Huang said.
The Thai bank’s performance would serve as a benchmark for the Taiwanese operations, he said.
Rakuten International Commercial Bank Co (樂天國際商銀), Taiwan’s first Web-only bank, opened in January, while Next Bank (將來銀行) is expected to become the third, as its application to begin operations is under review at the Financial Supervisory Commission.
This week’s undoing of the TerraUSD algorithmic stablecoin and its sister token, Luna, has ramifications for all of crypto. First, there is the immediate impact: The rapid collapse of a once-popular pair of cryptocurrencies sent a ripple effect across the industry, contributing to plummeting coin prices that wiped hundreds of billions of market value from the digital-asset market and stoked worries over the potential fragility of digital-asset ventures. Then there are the knock-on effects. In addition to delivering punishing losses to individual users and investment firms, the spectacular failure of a market darling like Terra threatens to have a cooling effect
China’s biggest chipmaker has cut its outlook for the second quarter, joining a growing list of manufacturers warning about the fallout from lockdowns aimed at containing the country’s worst COVID-19 outbreak in two years. Semiconductor Manufacturing International Co (SMIC, 中芯) estimates a month-long lockdown in Shanghai could spur component shortages and logistics tangles, and erase about 5 percent of its output in the second quarter. “We are trying our best to mitigate the impact on product delivery,” SMIC Chairman Gao Yonggang (高永崗) told analysts on a call yesterday morning. “We are still assessing the actual impact as many suppliers restart their
DISRUPTIONS: The war in Ukraine, China’s lockdown measures, rising interest rates and inflation have thrown a wrench into business plans made years in advance Samsung Electronics Co is talking with foundry clients about charging as much as 20 percent more for making semiconductors this year, joining an industry-wide push to hike prices to cover rising costs of materials and logistics. Contract-based chip prices are likely to rise around 15 percent to 20 percent, depending upon the level of sophistication, people familiar with the matter said. Chips produced on legacy nodes would face bigger price hikes, while new pricing would be applied from the second half of this year, they said, adding that Samsung has finished negotiating with some clients and is in discussions with others. Samsung’s decision
material SHORTAGE: Even as workers are about to return, Quanta lacks operating supplies, while Pegatron reported its lowest revenues in 11 quarters, the companies said Taiwan’s major Apple Inc supplier cut its outlook for the second quarter, joining a growing list of manufacturers warning about the fallout from lockdowns aimed at containing China’s worst COVID-19 outbreak in two years. Quanta Computer Inc (廣達電腦), which assembles MacBooks, expects a 20 percent quarterly fall in notebook shipments and a squeeze on margins this quarter due to the lockdown, a company representative said on Friday during an earnings call. The impact from supply chain disruptions could last until the end of the year, she said. The company’s Shanghai factory has been operating under tight restrictions since the middle of last month,