EMQ Taiwan (易安聯) is to halt its remittance services for migrant workers on Oct. 4, after the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) rejected its license application for not meeting capital requirements, the regulator said on Friday.
EMQ Taiwan, which has about 150,000 clients who are migrant workers, can continue helping its current clients remit money until Oct. 3, but cannot take on new ones, FSC Department of Planning Director-General Brenda Hu (胡則華) said.
The company has operated its remittance business as a regulated experiment in the commission’s “financial technology sandbox” since May 2019.
It applied for a formal license in July, but failed to boost its capital to meet minimum requirements by the end of last month, Hu said.
Under the Act Governing Electronic Payment Institutions (電子支付機構管理條例), a company without a license to operate an electronic payment service can apply for a restrictive license to provide remittance services.
To obtain such a license, the applicant’s paid-in capital or overheads may not be less than NT$100 million (US$3.61 million), which is lower than the NT$500 million requirement for those who apply for an e-payment license.
EMQ Taiwan’s overhead was NT$200,000, Hu said.
The company, a subsidiary of Hong Kong-based EMQ Inc, applied to the Ministry of Economic Affairs for a capital injection, but the ministry rejected it, Hu said.
With each of EMQ Taiwan’s clients on average remitting NT$9,000 to their family abroad in each transaction, the total exposure in its experiments in the sandbox was about NT$8 million, Hu said.
It must complete any remittance work for clients before Oct. 4, she added.
Welldone Co (統振), another company that has worked in the commission’s fintech sandbox, also filed for a restrictive license to continue its business, which is still being reviewed, the FSC said.
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
Taiwanese manufacturers have a chance to play a key role in the humanoid robot supply chain, Tongtai Machine and Tool Co (東台精機) chairman Yen Jui-hsiung (嚴瑞雄) said yesterday. That is because Taiwanese companies are capable of making key parts needed for humanoid robots to move, such as harmonic drives and planetary gearboxes, Yen said. This ability to produce these key elements could help Taiwanese manufacturers “become part of the US supply chain,” he added. Yen made the remarks a day after Nvidia Corp cofounder and chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said his company and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) are jointly
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) expects its addressable market to grow by a low single-digit percentage this year, lower than the overall foundry industry’s 15 percent expansion and the global semiconductor industry’s 10 percent growth, the contract chipmaker said yesterday after reporting the worst profit in four-and-a-half years in the fourth quarter of last year. Growth would be fueled by demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers, a moderate recovery in consumer electronics and an increase in semiconductor content, UMC said. “UMC’s goal is to outgrow our addressable market while maintaining our structural profitability,” UMC copresident Jason Wang (王石) told an online earnings
MARKET SHIFTS: Exports to the US soared more than 120 percent to almost one quarter, while ASEAN has steadily increased to 18.5 percent on rising tech sales The proportion of Taiwan’s exports directed to China, including Hong Kong, declined by more than 12 percentage points last year compared with its peak in 2020, the Ministry of Finance said on Thursday last week. The decrease reflects the ongoing restructuring of global supply chains, driven by escalating trade tensions between Beijing and Washington. Data compiled by the ministry showed China and Hong Kong accounted for 31.7 percent of Taiwan’s total outbound sales last year, a drop of 12.2 percentage points from a high of 43.9 percent in 2020. In addition to increasing trade conflicts between China and the US, the ministry said
RSS