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Carrefour launches digital wallet service in Taiwan

Carrefour taiwan

It is popular among many large retail channels, such as Family Mart, Lylefu, Watsons, and Quanlian, to launch their own payment tools. As one of the largest hypermarket chains in Taiwan, Carrefour has also launched its own payment tools, in addition to its Carrefour Pay, which was launched in October 2018.

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The new app is called Carrefour Wallet. It was launched this year on June 19 to provide an even more convenient digital service for Taiwanese customers.

Wang Junchao, General Manager of Carrefour said that Taiwan is the first market in the world to launch the new service of Carrefour Wallet. Carrefour Wallet has multi-functions which includes value storage, payment, point transfer, and transaction record inquiry.

Carrefour Wallet

Users can deposit through Visa, Mastercard, JCD, and other credit cards from over 34 banks. Customers can also easily transfer credits via Line, mobile message, Email, and other methods. Carrefour expects Carrefour Wallet to store a total of over NT $1 billion by the end of 2019.

However, what is the difference between Carrefour Wallet and Carrefour Pay? Carrefour finance manager, Zhang Weikang explained that Pay is a vehicle, while Wallet provides a more integrated service. “It is like a normal wallet where you can store a variety of different tools,” he said.

Next month, Carrefour will launch a new self- scanning service, allowing users to scan the product’s barcode and pay the bill with the Carrefour Wallet at the self-checkout desk. These new services can further expand the payment situation and speed up the checkout process.

But why did Carrefour choose to introduce the service to Taiwan first? Zhang Weikang explained that Taiwan’s market size is relatively moderate, and many countries regard Taiwan as a laboratory.

He gave an example: “10 years ago, Taiwan was the first Asia-Pacific country to be introduced an inductive payment machine. Australia was Taiwanese’s trainee. Today, Australia is already the world’s highest inductive payment user with the usage rate of 80%.”

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Nevertheless, the usage of mobile payment is still relatively low. As of now, Carrefour’s non-cash payment ratio is 60%, but the vast majority is still credit card payment. Action payment only accounts for 5% to 6% of the 60%. There is still a lot of room for growth in the future.

(Source: Bnext)