Competition is hotting up within the mobile payment market place. Apple Pay launched in Taiwan in March last year, but on Friday last week a third wave of four banks officially launched with Apple Inc’s mobile payment service. Within Taiwan, a total of 13 banks have now opened up their credit card services to accept Apple Pay. In a race to grab a share of the mobile payment pie, banks have been offering one-year reward schemes, with card holders who have linked their credit cards to Apple Pay eligible to receive card usage bonuses of up to NT$780.
KGI Bank, HSBC, First Commercial Bank and Hua Nan Commercial Bank last week simultaneously opened up support for Apple Pay to their credit card customers. When Apple’s mobile payment service first launched last year, an initial wave of seven banks came onboard, followed by a further two banks in February this year.
Although competitor mobile payment systems, Samsung Pay and Android Pay, have both launched in Taiwan, according to statistics from the Financial Supervisory Commission, Apple Pay has been the best received of the three major international mobile payment systems and has captured as much as 90 percent of market share.
Photo courtesy of KGI Bank
照片：凱基銀行提供
According to data from the commission, as of the end of February this year, more than 3.2 million domestic credit cards are now tied to either Apple, Samsung or Android Pay, which have collectively been used to process a total of NT$13.8 billion transactions. In the last two months alone, the number of mobile payments serviced by the three payment systems reached an average of NT$1.8 billion each month — nearly a 60 percent increase on average monthly credit card transaction figures for the previous year.
(LIBERTY TIMES, TRANSLATED BY EDWARD JONES)
行動支付市場競爭激烈，Apple Pay去年三月底在台灣上線開通，上週五第三批、四家銀行正式上線，國內已有十三家銀行的信用卡開通Apple Pay。為了搶佔行動支付商機，銀行業者祭出連續一年的綁定優惠，持卡人最高可獲得七百八十元的刷卡金。
凱基銀行、匯豐銀行、第一銀行及華南銀行，上週同步上線支援使用Apple Pay。Apple Pay去年在台灣上線開通，第一批七家銀行加入後，今年二月又有兩家銀行加入。
雖然Samsung Pay、Android Pay也已陸續上線，但根據金管會統計，國際三大Pay中，仍以Apple Pay最受歡迎，市佔率達九成。
根據金管會統計，截至今年二月底，三大Pay綁卡數已超過三百二十萬張，累計交易總額一百三十八億元。僅以前二個月的三大Pay的行動支付金額，每月平均可達十八億，比去年每月的平均刷卡金額，成長近六成。
(自由時報記者李靚慧)
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Vocab Extension
Market share refers to the percentage of total sales in a given market that is attributable to a particular company. It provides a measurement of the size of a company relative to its competitors and is used to assess the overall performance of a company within a particular market.
Questions
1. Is it healthy for a single company to have captured 90 percent of all business within a particular market?
2. How do you think mobile payments will affect “traditional” credit card payment service providers such as Visa, Mastercard or American Express?
3. What will be the future of mobile payment? Will we still be using paper money, coins and paper receipts five years from now?
(Edward Jones, Taipei Times)
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