萬國法律事務所

On 6 June 2015, Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan passed the amendment of “Governing Issuance of Electronic Stored Value Cards Act” (“amended Act”), thus providing the business of electronic stored value cards ways to engage in the business of third-party collections and payments, deposits of payments for value stored, and remittances of funds between electronic payments account (collectively, “Third-Party Payment Businesses”) after approved by the Financial Supervisory Commission. For example, people can use the value stored in their electronic cards for payments when they purchase on Internet. There are now four institutions can issue electronic stored value cards in Taiwan, including EasyCard, iCash, iPass and HappyCash; the total amount of current cards is about 57,260,000.

In order to prevent money laundering and protect the market order, people can only use registered electronic stored value cards to transfer their properties only to the same person’s account. And if someone sells electronic stored value cards which are not issued by the approved institution, the seller may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than three years or short-term imprisonment. In addition thereto, a fine of not more than NT$ 5,000,000 may be imposed.

According to the amended Act, if the non-bank card issuers obtain certain amount of payments, they should pay and deposit full reserve. Moreover, the non-bank card issuers must set aside funds received from users in trust in the specified deposit account, or obtain a full bank guarantee and must set aside certain percentage of the interest of the electronic stored value cards in special-purpose bank account to repay for the card holders.