While the Taiwan government has set a goal of reaching 90% penetration for mobile e-payment services by 2025, the goal is likely to be reached 3-5 years ahead of schedule, according to Marco Ma, Taiwan country manager for Visa.

Mobile e-payment penetration in Taiwan rose from about 24% in 2016 to about 40% in 2017. In Taiwan, about 50% of POS (point of sale/service) devices are equipped with sensing functions for contactless mobile e-payment currently and the popularity of these devices is rising.

In line with the growing pouplarity of mobile e-payment in Taiwan, Visa will increase the number of cooperative retail outlets supporting contactless e-payment and deploy additional sensing-enabled POS devices, Ma said.

QR Code scanning is another engine driving mobile e-payment because smartphone penetration in Taiwan is 86.8%, the highest among Asia Pacific countries, and over 70% of smartphone users prefer or are willing to use QR Code for mobile e-payment.

EMVCo, a consortium of the world's major credit card issuers, is developing a universal QR Code standard to facilitate QR Code-based mobile e-payment. The universal standard covers main existing mobile e-payment systems around the world, except for Alibay and WeChatPay operated by China-based Alibaba and Tencent respectively because the two companies are not members of EMVCo.

For promoting QR Code-based payment, Visa has been cooperating with Taiwan-based Financial Information Service (FIS) to develop a QR Code-based payment system in compliance with EMV universal standard, with the system to integrate T-wallet+ e-payment services already launched by FIS. Visa will also extend cooperation for QR Code-based payment from retail stores to goods delivery service providers, personal transportation service providers and others.