Visa Taiwan Co (台灣威士卡) will focus on developing business-to-business (B2B) payment, cross-border payment, and collaborations with local start-ups and fintech firms in the next three years, general manager Michelle Jao (趙麗芳) told a news conference in Taipei yesterday.
Visa Taiwan on Saturday formed a partnership with GoShare, Gogoro Inc’s (睿能創意) electric scooter sharing service, and plans to work with more fintech firms so its cards could be accepted at more platforms, Jao said.
Visa has benefited from its collaboration with about 20 fintech companies in the Asia-Pacific region in the past few years, with new credit card accounts increasing by 1 billion and its partner merchants rising by 65 million, Jao said.
While the company has cooperated with large-scale Chinese fintech firms such as Alipay.com Co (支付寶), Visa Taiwan would seek more local start-ups with great potential, as they would likely develop a global ecosystem, Jao said.
Visa Taiwan would set up its own fintech accelerator to nurture start-ups that could introduce new solutions, especially those focusing on cross-border remittance, cybersecurity, identity authentication, customer loyalty and B2B payments, Jao said.
The company is focusing on B2B payment and cross-border remittance as Taiwan is an export-oriented economy, she said, adding that with the nation’s exports and imports totaling more than US$610 billion a year, business opportunities would be huge if some companies were to adopt Visa’s payment solutions.
The company would also work with the nation’s three virtual banks, which are expected to begin operating by the end of the year, she said.
Visa Taiwan is negotiating with the Financial Supervisory Commission and the Bankers Association to launch its service — Visa B2B Connect, a non-card-based payment network that enables seamless bank-to-bank cross-border business transactions, Jao said.
The streamlined cross-border payment service has been launched in about 10 companies in the Asia-Pacific region, she added.
“As the innovative service is based on blockchain technology, we need to communicate with the regulator and the banks more, but overall, they are supportive and expect the technology to offer more convenience,” Jao said.
The COVID-19 pandemic has sped up digital payment adoption in Taiwan, with online payments growing 16 percent year-on-year, she added.
Visa would expand its network and apply its capabilities across all payment flows, becoming a single point of connection to help consumers, businesses and governments to move money safely and efficiently, she said.
NO BREAKTHROUGH? More substantial ‘deliverables,’ such as tariff reductions, would likely be saved for a meeting between Trump and Xi later this year, a trade expert said China launched two probes targeting the US semiconductor sector on Saturday ahead of talks between the two nations in Spain this week on trade, national security and the ownership of social media platform TikTok. China’s Ministry of Commerce announced an anti-dumping investigation into certain analog integrated circuits (ICs) imported from the US. The investigation is to target some commodity interface ICs and gate driver ICs, which are commonly made by US companies such as Texas Instruments Inc and ON Semiconductor Corp. The ministry also announced an anti-discrimination probe into US measures against China’s chip sector. US measures such as export curbs and tariffs
The US on Friday penalized two Chinese firms that acquired US chipmaking equipment for China’s top chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯國際), including them among 32 entities that were added to the US Department of Commerce’s restricted trade list, a US government posting showed. Twenty-three of the 32 are in China. GMC Semiconductor Technology (Wuxi) Co (吉姆西半導體科技) and Jicun Semiconductor Technology (Shanghai) Co (吉存半導體科技) were placed on the list, formally known as the Entity List, for acquiring equipment for SMIC Northern Integrated Circuit Manufacturing (Beijing) Corp (中芯北方積體電路) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International (Beijing) Corp (中芯北京), the US Federal Register posting said. The
READY TO HELP: Should TSMC require assistance, the government would fully cooperate in helping to speed up the establishment of the Chiayi plant, an official said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said its investment plans in Taiwan are “unchanged” amid speculation that the chipmaker might have suspended construction work on its second chip packaging plant in Chiayi County and plans to move equipment arranged for the plant to the US. The Chinese-language Economic Daily News reported earlier yesterday that TSMC had halted the construction of the chip packaging plant, which was scheduled to be completed next year and begin mass production in 2028. TSMC did not directly address whether construction of the plant had halted, but said its investment plans in Taiwan remain “unchanged.” The chipmaker started
MORTGAGE WORRIES: About 34% of respondents to a survey said they would approach multiple lenders to pay for a home, while 29.2% said they would ask family for help New housing projects in Taiwan’s six special municipalities, as well as Hsinchu city and county, are projected to total NT$710.65 billion (US$23.61 billion) in the upcoming fall sales season, a record 30 percent decrease from a year earlier, as tighter mortgage rules prompt developers to pull back, property listing platform 591.com (591新建案) said yesterday. The number of projects has also fallen to 312, a more than 20 percent decrease year-on-year, underscoring weakening sentiment and momentum amid lingering policy and financing headwinds. New Taipei City and Taoyuan bucked the downturn in project value, while Taipei, Hsinchu city and county, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung
RSS