NFC TIMES Exclusive – EasyCard Corp. remains the dominant contactless stored-value card in Taiwan, boasting of market shares above 70% in transit fare payments and retail transactions nationally amid competition from three other contactless closed-loop cards that vie for transit and low-value retail transactions across the island nation.
But competition is changing in Taiwan and in other Asian countries where e-purse payments providers have used their base of millions of mass transit-riding cardholders to expand into retail and other markets. EasyCard Corp. provides an example of the challenges these providers are facing.
For EasyCard, the Covid-19 pandemic, which has cut fare revenue substantially this year, is occurring at a bad time for the company. EasyCard had already been seeing slow growth in retail transaction volume with its cards before the pandemic and that has turned to low single-digit decreases.
