ACpay Co Ltd (交流資服), a fintech firm devoted to providing payment and e-commerce service solutions, is set to list on Taiwan’s Emerging Stock Board on Friday next week at NT$34 per share, as local retailers and restaurants embrace digital transformation.
Created in 2020 with capital of NT$131 million (US$4.06 million), the Taipei-based company counts food and beverage chain La Kaffa International Co (六角國際), memory module maker Adata Technology Co (威剛科技), HIM International Music Inc (華研國際) and the government’s National Development Fund (國發基金) as its major investors, ACpay chairman Tesla Chen (陳彥甫) told a news conference in Taipei.
“A business turning point would come in the first quarter of next year, allowing the company to break even in the third quarter,” Chen said, adding that the goal is possible once its gross merchandise value reaches NT$6 billion.
Photo: Ou Yu-hsiang, Taipei Times
Payment solutions currently generate 70 percent of the company’s revenue, but would moderate to 33 percent from next year, as e-commerce and subscription fees gain equal importance, Chen said.
Toward that end, it spent NT$30 million this year integrating its e-commerce iCarry and third-party payment ACpay businesses so that its income sources would expand to subscription fees linked to its value-added content, and data analysis, advertisements and profit-sharing, he said.
Taiwan’s retail market expanded 11.1 percent from NT$3.85 trillion before the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019 to NT$4.28 trillion last year, aided by the ease and convenience of online shopping, Chen said.
At the same time, transactions carried out on PCs and smartphones spiked 71.6 percent from NT$283.7 billion to NT$493 billion, as consumers grew increasingly comfortable with online shopping, he said.
The figures suggest huge business potential for ACpay, Chen said.
The National Development Fund is providing financial support as it shares the need to speed up digital transformation at local retailers, eateries, gift shops and other relatively small business operators, he said.
Chia Te Bakery Co (嘉德糕餅), known for its pineapple cakes, became a customer partly to guard against customer data breaches, Chen said, adding that ACpay’s customers include 7-Eleven convenience store chain operator President Chain Store Corp (統一超商), Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd (國泰航空) and barbeque restaurant chain Hutong Yakiniku (胡同燒肉).
ACpay also integrates bonus points and coupons on behalf of its customers, he said.
Such services could help boost business revenue by 15 percent during a sales season, he added.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”