The number of digital savings accounts at Taiwanese banks totaled 8.32 million at the end of last month, up 70 percent from a year earlier, as more people used digital accounts to pay bills online amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Financial Supervisory Commission data showed on Tuesday.
“It was the business ecosystem effect,” Banking Bureau Chief Secretary Phil Tong (童政彰) told a videoconference in New Taipei City. “As more stores collaborated with banks and offered special rewards for their clients, people were more interested in opening digital accounts to get the benefits.”
There was also a sudden increase in spending on e-commerce and food delivery services during the pandemic, Tong said.
The commission classifies digital savings accounts in three categories according to the method of identification used to open the account.
The first category comprises accounts using Citizen Digital Certificates-based identification, the second comprises accounts held by people who already held another account with the bank and the third is based on identification by credit card.
The first and second categories have a limit of NT$50,000 per transfer and NT$100,000 on transfers per day, while the third category allows single transfers of up to NT$10,000 and transfers of up to NT$30,000 per day.
Commission data showed that 3.33 million people held accounts in the third category, up 77.5 percent from a year earlier.
The number of people holding accounts in the second category expanded 75 percent to 2.91 million and the number of those holding accounts in the first category grew 50 percent to 2.07 million, the data showed.
Despite lower limits on transfers, the third type of account was the most popular, as most account holders use it for small payments, Tong said, asking that the limit might be raised in the fourth quarter.
Among the nation’s banks, Taishin International Bank’s (台新銀行) Richart online service had the most accounts, with 2.59 million, followed by Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) with 1.27 million accounts, Bank SinoPac (永豐銀行) with 894,000 accounts, First Commercial Bank (第一銀行) with 647,000 and O-Bank (王道商業銀行) with 462,000, commission data showed.
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