UnionPay has realised the global expansion of its network, brand and
products, and has promoted the globalisation of China's financial
technical standard too. UnionPay International now has presence in over 50 markets along the Belt and Road, the company has announced.
UnionPay International CEO Cai Jianbo said, "Our strategy is to suit our measures to the local conditions in different markets, supporting the personnel exchanges between China and other regions and facilitating the Going Global of China's financial standards."
In Kazakhstan, for example, over 1.3 million UnionPay cards have been issued. UnionPay's acceptance coverage at ATMs and point of sale (POS) terminals has increased from 50% and 20% respectively to 80% each in two years. Penetration is expected to grow to 95% this year.
In Pakistan, UnionPay is accepted at almost all the POS terminals and over 70% of ATMs. More than 3.4 million UnionPay cards have been issued, making UnionPay the international card brand with the second-largest market share there.
In 2016, the transaction volume in China with UnionPay cards issued in Pakistan and Nepal almost tripled, and that of UnionPay cards issued in Kyrgyzstan and Indonesia grew by about 50%.
UnionPay also participated in the construction of Laos' national bankcard payment network, and has jointly built the Thai Payment Network (TPN) with the major banks in Thailand. UnionPay also helped Thailand in creating its own debit card brand, TPN.
The UnionPay chip card standard is adopted as the recommended standard in Thailand and Myanmar, and is taken as the cross-border chip card standard of the Asian Payment Network (APN). This February, UnionPay International and the Philippines' switch network, BancNet, announced that they would promote the latter's member banks to issue UnionPay chip cards in a large scale.
Showing posts with label status. Show all posts
Showing posts with label status. Show all posts
12 May 2017
5 December 2016
World Bank delivers report card for Vietnam
Vietnam’s economy remains resilient thanks to robust domestic demand and export-oriented manufacturing, according to the World Bank’s latest Taking Stock report. Vietnam’s medium-term outlook remains favourable, with gross domestic product (GDP) expected to expand by 6% this year.
The report, a biannual review of the country’s economic performance, finds that Vietnam’s growth slowed to 5.9% during the first three quarters of the year, mainly because of a severe drought that has reduced agricultural output, cut down on oil production and slowed external demand. The fundamental drivers of growth – resilient domestic demand and export oriented manufacturing – remain in force.
Vietnam’s growth was accompanied by low inflation and widening current account surplus. And despite price hikes for health and education services, core inflation remains low and headline inflation is expected to stay below the official target of 5%.
“Vietnam’s macroeconomic stability creates a favourable environment for policy makers to accelerate structural reforms, which is crucial as the country moves toward a more productivity-led growth model,” said Ousmane Dione, World Bank Country Director for Vietnam. “The adoption of the 2016-2020 economic restructuring plan by (the) National Assembly in November, for instance, would address some of the emerging obstacles to growth in the economy.”
According to the report, Vietnam’s fiscal deficit remains sizable and is approaching the statutory limit of 65% of GDP, but the government has reinforced its commitment to achieving fiscal consolidation in the medium term. The economy’s recent performance owes in part to rapid credit growth and an accommodative fiscal stance, which may support growth in the short term but amplify existing medium-term financial and fiscal risks.
Easing monetary conditions and reducing credit growth could also worsen existing macroeconomic and financial vulnerabilities, the report said. Risks that could adversely affect medium term prospects include delayed implementation of structural and fiscal reforms, a further slowdown in the global economy, fragile global financial market conditions, and the prospect of rising interest rates in the US.
The report also notes that Vietnam’s agricultural sector has made enormous progress, such as higher productivity and output, contributing to national goals of achieving food security, poverty reduction and social stability. It also points out the growing concerns about the quality and sustainability of Vietnam’s agricultural growth. Higher productivity has come from more and more inputs and increasing environmental costs.
According to the report, the Vietnamese government has played a major role in agricultural development. But the government will need to lead less yet facilitate more to transform Vietnam’s agriculture and agro-food system. For example, the government can undertake less direct investment in agriculture while focusing more on facilitating a more active agricultural land market, supporting rural infrastructure, reducing the transaction costs of farmers and agro-enterprises, and revitalising the country’s agricultural innovation system.
The report, a biannual review of the country’s economic performance, finds that Vietnam’s growth slowed to 5.9% during the first three quarters of the year, mainly because of a severe drought that has reduced agricultural output, cut down on oil production and slowed external demand. The fundamental drivers of growth – resilient domestic demand and export oriented manufacturing – remain in force.
Vietnam’s growth was accompanied by low inflation and widening current account surplus. And despite price hikes for health and education services, core inflation remains low and headline inflation is expected to stay below the official target of 5%.
“Vietnam’s macroeconomic stability creates a favourable environment for policy makers to accelerate structural reforms, which is crucial as the country moves toward a more productivity-led growth model,” said Ousmane Dione, World Bank Country Director for Vietnam. “The adoption of the 2016-2020 economic restructuring plan by (the) National Assembly in November, for instance, would address some of the emerging obstacles to growth in the economy.”
According to the report, Vietnam’s fiscal deficit remains sizable and is approaching the statutory limit of 65% of GDP, but the government has reinforced its commitment to achieving fiscal consolidation in the medium term. The economy’s recent performance owes in part to rapid credit growth and an accommodative fiscal stance, which may support growth in the short term but amplify existing medium-term financial and fiscal risks.
Easing monetary conditions and reducing credit growth could also worsen existing macroeconomic and financial vulnerabilities, the report said. Risks that could adversely affect medium term prospects include delayed implementation of structural and fiscal reforms, a further slowdown in the global economy, fragile global financial market conditions, and the prospect of rising interest rates in the US.
The report also notes that Vietnam’s agricultural sector has made enormous progress, such as higher productivity and output, contributing to national goals of achieving food security, poverty reduction and social stability. It also points out the growing concerns about the quality and sustainability of Vietnam’s agricultural growth. Higher productivity has come from more and more inputs and increasing environmental costs.
According to the report, the Vietnamese government has played a major role in agricultural development. But the government will need to lead less yet facilitate more to transform Vietnam’s agriculture and agro-food system. For example, the government can undertake less direct investment in agriculture while focusing more on facilitating a more active agricultural land market, supporting rural infrastructure, reducing the transaction costs of farmers and agro-enterprises, and revitalising the country’s agricultural innovation system.
24 March 2016
Quandoo reports significant takeup in Singapore, Australia
Quandoo reports 720 restaurant partners, 1.5 million seated diners in the last 12 months and over 1,400 verified reviews from Singapore diners each month. The online restaurant reservation service, launched in Singapore in 2014, sees 53% of its Singapore users making repeat reservations. The company assessed publicly-available information of the industry and the respective market competitors by the number of connected partner restaurants, and has found it leads in seven markets around the world, including in Singapore, Hong Kong and Turkey.
The company, which also serves Australia, Lebanon, and the UAE in Asia Pacific and the Middle East, it has seen similar trends globally. The company grew its partner restaurant base by 117% from 6,200 restaurants to 13,500 restaurants and has seated more than 24 million diners globally. Quandoo’s penetration of Australia has been particularly fast. Within eight months 1,250 restaurants have joined Quandoo.
The company, which also serves Australia, Lebanon, and the UAE in Asia Pacific and the Middle East, it has seen similar trends globally. The company grew its partner restaurant base by 117% from 6,200 restaurants to 13,500 restaurants and has seated more than 24 million diners globally. Quandoo’s penetration of Australia has been particularly fast. Within eight months 1,250 restaurants have joined Quandoo.
Philipp Magin, founder and CEO of Quandoo, said, “Our ambition remains the same: to be the driving force in the digitalising of the restaurant reservation space. The changes that we have undergone in the last year have allowed us to transform our company towards maintaining this objective in a more and more competitive market environment. While the cultural and strategic shift has not been easy to achieve, we are now better equipped than ever before in becoming the leading provider for restaurant reservations globally.”
Dr Charlotte Bruce, Quandoo Vice President Asia and Pacific, said, “Singapore is a melting pot of different cultures with great diversity of cuisines. In Asia, it offers one of the most sophisticated and world-class dining scenes. Competition is fierce and Quandoo identified an opportunity to help businesses use this incredible platform to grow their business and stay ahead of the curve. We have been relentless in our efforts since day one and are proud of our position as market leaders – having gone against competition that have been in the market for up to five years.”
Dr Charlotte Bruce, Quandoo Vice President Asia and Pacific, said, “Singapore is a melting pot of different cultures with great diversity of cuisines. In Asia, it offers one of the most sophisticated and world-class dining scenes. Competition is fierce and Quandoo identified an opportunity to help businesses use this incredible platform to grow their business and stay ahead of the curve. We have been relentless in our efforts since day one and are proud of our position as market leaders – having gone against competition that have been in the market for up to five years.”
The company further established several alliances in the last year, partnering for example with Foursquare in Turkey.
25 March 2014
Telling gender from Facebook posts
Researchers have found that it is possible to predict gender and age purely from Facebook status messages. A September 2013 study published in research journal Plos One says that there are clear differences in the way males and females use language in social media. Age and location can also affect the choice of words, researchers said in the report, titled Personality, Gender, and Age in the Language of Social Media: The Open-Vocabulary Approach.
Females are more likely to describe emotions with words like "love", "wonderful", "excited", and use "I" while males are more likely to swear, talk about electronic games and sports, said researchers
Word clouds created by researchers show that feminine status messages are about being excited about tomorrow, how cute puppies and babies are, feelings about the other half, or concerning family members. The masculine ones are about battles, football, Xbox, and the government.
Areas to be explored further include investigating whether emotionally stable individuals indeed spend time writing about enjoyable social activities that may foster greater emotional stability, such as ‘sports’, ‘vacation’, ‘beach’, team’, or if introverts are actually interested in Japanese media as indicated by the research, ‘anime’, ‘manga’, ‘japanese’, and Japanese style emoticons: ˆ_ˆ predominating.
The researchers used approximately 19 million Facebook status updates written by 136,000 participants that had been shared as part of voluntary permission given through the My Personality application. The actual users studied had to use English as a primary language, have written at least 1,000 words in their status updates, and under 65 years old. This resulted in 74,941 volunteers, and 309 million words across 15.4 million status updates studied.
The full study can be viewed here.
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| Singapore bank DBS' lucky red packets |
Word clouds created by researchers show that feminine status messages are about being excited about tomorrow, how cute puppies and babies are, feelings about the other half, or concerning family members. The masculine ones are about battles, football, Xbox, and the government.
Areas to be explored further include investigating whether emotionally stable individuals indeed spend time writing about enjoyable social activities that may foster greater emotional stability, such as ‘sports’, ‘vacation’, ‘beach’, team’, or if introverts are actually interested in Japanese media as indicated by the research, ‘anime’, ‘manga’, ‘japanese’, and Japanese style emoticons: ˆ_ˆ predominating.
The researchers used approximately 19 million Facebook status updates written by 136,000 participants that had been shared as part of voluntary permission given through the My Personality application. The actual users studied had to use English as a primary language, have written at least 1,000 words in their status updates, and under 65 years old. This resulted in 74,941 volunteers, and 309 million words across 15.4 million status updates studied.
The full study can be viewed here.
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