Credit card spending on food delivery services rose to NT$1.06 billion (US$36.36 million) in June, double that of a year earlier and higher than before the COVID-19 pandemic, indicating that people have continued using such services, despite the pandemic easing, the National Credit Card Center said in a report last week.
Credit card spending on food delivery services, such as Uber Eats Taiwan and Foodpanda, accelerated to NT$852 million in March as the pandemic escalated and peaked in April at NT$1.26 billion, compared with NT$400 million to NT$700 million per month in the second half of last year, the center’s data showed.
Spending did not drop significantly as infections slowed in May and June, being about NT$1.05 billion in both months, up from a year earlier by 245 percent and 198 percent respectively, the report said.
Photo: Hsu Kuo-chen, Taipei Times
The number of transactions made on food delivery apps slid to 4.44 million in May and 4.5 million in June from the April peak of 6.12 million, it said, adding that the figures were about triple what they were a year earlier.
Most people pay for food delivery with a credit card, although some platforms only accept cash, the center said.
“Spending on delivery services did not lose momentum even after the outbreak eased, which might be because restaurants joining delivery platforms attracted more users,” the report said.
Many restaurants last quarter partnered with delivery providers as people avoided dining out due to the pandemic, which increased the options for customers, it said.
However, the rise in credit card spending on deliveries did not offset a decline in sales at restaurants, it said.
The food and beverage industry’s combined sales fell from NT$82.8 billion in January to NT$63.8 in June, the report said.
“It seems that food delivery merely cushioned the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the food industry and helped restaurants weather the crisis,” the center said.
The data showed that 60 percent of delivery orders were less than NT$200 in the first six months of this year, compared with 45 percent a year earlier.
Orders from NT$201 to NT$500 accounted for 35 percent of the total in the January-to-June period, down from 45 percent a year earlier, the data showed.
Spending per order plunged 29 percent from NT$313 in the first half of last year to NT$222 in the same period this year, the data showed.
China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) plans to start mass-producing its most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip in the first quarter of next year, even as it struggles to make enough chips due to US restrictions, two people familiar with the matter said. The telecoms conglomerate has sent samples of the Ascend 910C — its newest chip, meant to rival those made by US chipmaker Nvidia Corp — to some technology firms and started taking orders, the sources told Reuters. The 910C is being made by top Chinese contract chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) on its N+2 process, but a lack
NVIDIA PLATFORM: Hon Hai’s Mexican facility is to begin production early next year and a Taiwan site is to enter production next month, Nvidia wrote on its blog Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), the world’s biggest electronics manufacturer, yesterday said it is expanding production capacity of artificial intelligence (AI) servers based on Nvidia Corp’s Blackwell chips in Taiwan, the US and Mexico to cope with rising demand. Hon Hai’s new AI-enabled factories are to use Nvidia’s Omnivores platform to create 3D digital twins to plan and simulate automated production lines at a factory in Hsinchu, the company said in a statement. Nvidia’s Omnivores platform is for developing industrial AI simulation applications and helps bring facilities online faster. Hon Hai’s Mexican facility is to begin production early next year and the
AVIATION BOOM: CAL is to renew its passenger and cargo fleets starting next year on record profits as aviation continues to return to pre-pandemic levels China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空) yesterday said it is optimistic about next year’s business outlook, as the airline continues to renew its fleet on expectations that global passenger traffic would maintain steady growth and air cargo demand would remain strong. From next year to 2028, the airline is to welcome a new Boeing Co 787 fleet — 18 787-9 and six 787-10 passenger aircraft — to cover regional and medium to long-haul destinations, CAL chairman Hsieh Shih-chien (謝世謙) said at an investors’ conference in Taipei. The airline would also continue to introduce Airbus SE 321neo passenger planes and Boeing 777F cargo jets,
Who would not want a social media audience that grows without new content? During the three years she paused production of her short do-it-yourself (DIY) farmer’s lifestyle videos, Chinese vlogger Li Ziqi (李子柒), 34, has seen her YouTube subscribers increase to 20.2 million from about 14 million. While YouTube is banned in China, her fan base there — although not the size of YouTube’s MrBeast, who has 330 million subscribers — is close to 100 million across the country’s social media platforms Douyin (抖音), Sina Weibo (新浪微博) and Xiaohongshu (小紅書). When Li finally released new videos last week — ending what has
RSS