The Taiwanese QR code mobile payment service, TWQR, has been launched in South Korea, the Bankers Association of the ROC (銀行公會) and Financial Information Service Co (FISC, 財金資訊) said in a joint statement yesterday.
The mobile payment service, available at 35,000 merchants in the East Asian country, is a collaboration between the two Taiwanese organizations and the South Korean financial services company BC Card Co, the statement said.
Thirteen Taiwanese financial institutions, led by the Bank of Taiwan (臺灣銀行), have partnered with BC Card for the new service, it said, adding that more banks and electronic payment service providers are expected to join the service.
Photo courtesy of Bankers Association of the ROC
Taiwanese with electronic wallets linked to any of the 13 financial institutions can pay for purchases or expenses in South Korea by scanning the merchants’ TWQR code without having to download separate apps, the statement said.
The new service would save users 1.5 percent on credit card processing fees, and reward them with 15 percent cash back until the end of April, it said.
Two-way travel between Taiwan and South Korea reached up to 2.5 million visits each year before the COVID-19 pandemic.
With mutual visits recovering quickly after the pandemic, South Korea was the third-most popular destination for Taiwanese travelers last year, the Bankers Association and FISC said, citing statistics provided by the Tourism Administration.
Yesterday’s announcement was made at a news conference in Seoul, with Bankers Association chairman Lei Chung-dar (雷仲達), FISC chairman Lin Kuo-liang (林國良) and BC Card CEO Choi Won-seok, as well as several business and industry representatives from the two countries attending.
“Taiwan and South Korea are geographically close to each other and are each other’s fifth-largest trading partner,” Lei said in the statement. “At a time when bilateral exchanges between Taiwan and South Korea are increasing, the launch of the TWQR mobile payment service in South Korea is expected to benefit more Taiwanese visiting South Korea and further promote cashless transactions.”
Following the introduction of TWQR in South Korea, the next step is to allow South Korean tourists to make simple and convenient payments in Taiwan, Lin said in the statement.
Longer term, FISC aims to work with more countries on cross-border payment cooperation and promote more financial exchanges, he added.
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
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.
RSS