Digital Payments & Fintech - Taiwan

Effective 1 July 2021, the amended EPI Act consolidated electronic payments and electronically stored-value cards into a single unified framework, repealing the separate Act Governing Issuance of Electronic Stored Value Cards. Licensed core businesses now include agent payment collection, stored-value fund acceptance, small-amount domestic and cross-border remittances, and related foreign-exchange services.

Operators exceeding the TWD 2 billion funds threshold must obtain FSC approval as a Specialized EPI; 29 EPIs are currently licensed (9 non-bank specialists including iPASS Money and JKOPay, plus 20 banks). Below that threshold, businesses register as Third-Party Payment Service Providers under the Ministry of Digital Affairs' AML and service-capability registration regime, which came into force on 30 November 2024.

The FSC adopted a three-phase open banking rollout: Phase I (public product data, 2019), Phase II (customer data), and Phase III (transaction data, January 2024) are all in place. Phase III enables third-party service providers (TSPs), with customer consent, to initiate debits, payments, and remittances directly from bank accounts via standardised open APIs.

The Financial Information Service Co. (FISC) introduced TWQR in 2023 as Taiwan's national common QR code payment standard, enabling interoperability across e-wallet providers including JKOPay and iPASS Money. The FSC has set a target of 8 billion non-cash payment transactions by 2026.

BNPL services currently operate in a regulatory gray area; dedicated platforms avoid characterising their services as lending or credit. The FSC informed the Legislative Yuan's Finance Committee that it would issue BNPL regulatory guidelines focusing on risk management, consumer protection, and user education, but as of May 2026 a formal dedicated BNPL statutory framework has not been enacted.

In January 2025 the FSC established a new Financial Market Development and Innovation Division to advance fintech development. Taiwan's Financial Technology Development and Innovative Experimentation Act (sandbox law) allows firms to test regulated fintech services with regulatory relief for up to three years, supporting iterative licensing pathways for novel payment models.