Credit card spending in Taiwan reached the third-highest monthly level in November last year in the nation’s banking history, according to the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC).
Credit card holders in Taiwan spent NT$212.5 billion (US$6.64 billion) in November, up 6.46 percent from a month earlier and 14.93 percent from a year earlier, the commission said.
It was the third-highest figure in Taiwan’s banking history, after the NT$263.5 billion recorded in June last year and NT$242.5 billion in June 2015.
The increase in credit spending resulted partly from aggressive promotional campaigns launched by department stores to celebrate anniversaries, FSC Banking Bureau Deputy Director Sherri Chuang (莊秀媛) said.
Many travel agencies unveiled early bird-deals for winter holiday’s and the Lunar New Year holiday, prompting people to get out their credit cards, Chuang said.
In the first 11 months of last year, credit card spending in Taiwan totaled NT$2.2 trillion, which was close to the NT$2.231 trillion spent for the whole of 2015, the commission said.
As of the end of Nov. l, there were 36 authorized credit card issuers in Taiwan and 26.87 million cards, the commission said.
In November alone, overdue credit card debt totaled NT$440 million and the overdue loan ratio was 0.26 percent among the 36 issuers, compared with a debt of NT$320 million the previous month and an overdue loan ratio of 0.28 percent, it said.
Electronic credit card payments totaled NT$6.47 billion in November, down 5.27 percent from a month earlier, but up 12.33 percent from a year earlier, the commission said.
Six firms, including two banks, were providing third-party electronic credit card payment business in Taiwan as of the end of November, the commission said.
ADVANCED: Previously, Taiwanese chip companies were restricted from building overseas fabs with technology less than two generations behind domestic factories Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp, would no longer be restricted from investing in next-generation 2-nanometer chip production in the US, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. However, the ministry added that the world’s biggest contract chipmaker would not be making any reckless decisions, given the weight of its up to US$30 billion investment. To safeguard Taiwan’s chip technology advantages, the government has barred local chipmakers from making chips using more advanced technologies at their overseas factories, in China particularly. Chipmakers were previously only allowed to produce chips using less advanced technologies, specifically
BRAVE NEW WORLD: Nvidia believes that AI would fuel a new industrial revolution and would ‘do whatever we can’ to guide US AI policy, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp cofounder and chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Tuesday said he is ready to meet US president-elect Donald Trump and offer his help to the incoming administration. “I’d be delighted to go see him and congratulate him, and do whatever we can to make this administration succeed,” Huang said in an interview with Bloomberg Television, adding that he has not been invited to visit Trump’s home base at Mar-a-Lago in Florida yet. As head of the world’s most valuable chipmaker, Huang has an opportunity to help steer the administration’s artificial intelligence (AI) policy at a moment of rapid change.
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
TARIFF SURGE: The strong performance could be attributed to the growing artificial intelligence device market and mass orders ahead of potential US tariffs, analysts said The combined revenue of companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange and the Taipei Exchange for the whole of last year totaled NT$44.66 trillion (US$1.35 trillion), up 12.8 percent year-on-year and hit a record high, data compiled by investment consulting firm CMoney showed on Saturday. The result came after listed firms reported a 23.92 percent annual increase in combined revenue for last month at NT$4.1 trillion, the second-highest for the month of December on record, and posted a 15.63 percent rise in combined revenue for the December quarter at NT$12.25 billion, the highest quarterly figure ever, the data showed. Analysts attributed the
RSS