The Taiwanese QR code mobile payment service, TWQR, has been launched in South Korea, the Bankers Association of the ROC (銀行公會) and Financial Information Service Co (FISC, 財金資訊) said in a joint statement yesterday.
The mobile payment service, available at 35,000 merchants in the East Asian country, is a collaboration between the two Taiwanese organizations and the South Korean financial services company BC Card Co, the statement said.
Thirteen Taiwanese financial institutions, led by the Bank of Taiwan (臺灣銀行), have partnered with BC Card for the new service, it said, adding that more banks and electronic payment service providers are expected to join the service.
Photo courtesy of Bankers Association of the ROC
Taiwanese with electronic wallets linked to any of the 13 financial institutions can pay for purchases or expenses in South Korea by scanning the merchants’ TWQR code without having to download separate apps, the statement said.
The new service would save users 1.5 percent on credit card processing fees, and reward them with 15 percent cash back until the end of April, it said.
Two-way travel between Taiwan and South Korea reached up to 2.5 million visits each year before the COVID-19 pandemic.
With mutual visits recovering quickly after the pandemic, South Korea was the third-most popular destination for Taiwanese travelers last year, the Bankers Association and FISC said, citing statistics provided by the Tourism Administration.
Yesterday’s announcement was made at a news conference in Seoul, with Bankers Association chairman Lei Chung-dar (雷仲達), FISC chairman Lin Kuo-liang (林國良) and BC Card CEO Choi Won-seok, as well as several business and industry representatives from the two countries attending.
“Taiwan and South Korea are geographically close to each other and are each other’s fifth-largest trading partner,” Lei said in the statement. “At a time when bilateral exchanges between Taiwan and South Korea are increasing, the launch of the TWQR mobile payment service in South Korea is expected to benefit more Taiwanese visiting South Korea and further promote cashless transactions.”
Following the introduction of TWQR in South Korea, the next step is to allow South Korean tourists to make simple and convenient payments in Taiwan, Lin said in the statement.
Longer term, FISC aims to work with more countries on cross-border payment cooperation and promote more financial exchanges, he added.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by