Taiwan's FinTech Development

30-Second Overview: On July 10, 2025, the parent company of Taiwan’s largest local mobile payment platform, "Jiekou Pay" (街口支付), was seized by the court, with deposits across five bank accounts totaling less than a thousand dollars. Nine years earlier, when founder Hu Yijia returned to Taiwan from Wall Street, he said he wanted to make Taiwan’s payments as convenient as China’s. What happened in between? Taiwan’s FinTech journey began with a 2015 policy white paper, moving through regulatory sandboxes, mobile payment wars, three pure online banks accumulating NT$9 billion in losses, to the central bank’s digital New Taiwan dollar pilot—each step a tightrope walk between "let innovation run" and "don’t let it crash."

The Wall Street Golden Boy Returns

In 2015, a man in his early thirties returned to Taiwan from China and founded Jiekou Pay.

His name is Hu Yijia. He graduated from the Department of Applied Mathematics at National Chiao Tung University, holds a master’s degree from Columbia University, and worked as a hedge fund analyst on Wall Street with an annual salary exceeding ten million New Taiwan dollars. The media dubbed him the "Wall Street Golden Boy." But what brought him back to Taiwan was not nostalgia: having spent several years in Suzhou, China, he witnessed firsthand how Alipay and WeChat Pay changed the consumption habits of over a billion people, and he wanted to bring that same transformation to Taiwan. ¹

His family background is equally notable: his grandfather, Hu Xin, served as a bodyguard for Chiang Kai-shek, and his father, Hu Dingwu, served as chairman of Development Financial Holdings and Taipei 101. Hu Yijia had access to financial circles’ networks from birth. ²

Jiekou Pay obtained its electronic payment license in 2018 and officially launched, capturing market share through high-reward incentives. By 2020, Jiekou had become Taiwan’s largest local mobile payment brand, with over 6 million users. Hu Yijia publicly challenged LINE Pay, stating plans to list Jiekou on the Taiwan OTC Exchange (GET) in 2024 and on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) in 2025. ³

Then things began to turn.

The Day 3.6 Billion Vanished

In 2023, Zhan Jingchao, chairman of Taishan Enterprise, acquired a 40% stake in Jiekou FinTech for NT$3.6 billion. However, Taishan’s internal management struggle erupted shortly after; the new team, once it took control of the board, filed a lawsuit against the transaction.

In July 2025, the court ruled the transaction invalid, ordering Jiekou FinTech to return the NT$3.6 billion. During the execution of the seizure, court personnel discovered a startling fact: the combined deposits in Jiekou FinTech’s five bank accounts totaled less than a thousand dollars. ⁴

On the day of the seizure, nearly 300 employees were temporarily notified to work from home, and the office sign was taken down. Hu Yijia was subsequently indicted by prosecutors for special breach of trust, placed under travel restrictions, and at one point faced monitoring via an electronic ankle bracelet. ⁵

📝 Curator’s Note
Jiekou Pay’s user funds are safe—under the Electronic Payment Institution Management Act, all stored value is held in trust accounts by custodian banks, completely isolated from the parent company’s finances. The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) has repeatedly emphasized this. But the image of "accounts holding less than a thousand dollars" has severely damaged the foundation of trust in Taiwan’s fintech startups.

This is not the first time Hu Yijia has clashed with regulators. As early as 2020, the FSC fined him NT$3 million and removed him from his board position at Jiekou Investment Trust due to seven violations involving its "Tuofubao" product: misleading investors and undermining corporate governance. His response at the time was to publicly publish an article attacking the FSC. ⁶

Jiekou’s story is a microcosm of Taiwan’s FinTech decade: policy opened the door, but those who rush through may not arrive safely.

A Law That Changed the Rules of the Game

Let’s go back to 2015. That year, the FSC released the FinTech Development Strategy White Paper, declaring Taiwan’s intent to embrace FinTech. Two years later, the FinTech Innovation and Experimental Act was passed by the Legislative Yuan: this was Asia’s first specialized law, making Taiwan one of the few countries globally with a legal framework for a "regulatory sandbox." ⁷

The sandbox’s logic is simple: You have a financial innovation idea, but current regulations don’t allow it? Apply to enter the sandbox, experiment within a limited scope, and if successful, the law is amended to legalize it; if it fails, you are not penalized.

It sounds ideal, but in practice, it is more conservative than imagined.

Joinvest is one of the few successful cases to graduate from the sandbox—the company operates a bond group-buying platform, allowing retail investors to jointly purchase bonds previously accessible only to institutional investors. Entering the sandbox for experimentation in 2021, it received FSC recognition for being "innovative and conducive to financial inclusion," directly prompting amendments to the Standards for the Establishment of Securities Firms. ⁸

But the numbers on the other side are less flattering. Seven years after the sandbox launched, the cumulative number of approved experimental cases is not large, and even fewer have "graduated" and prompted regulatory amendments. Critics argue that Taiwan’s sandbox has too high a threshold, too slow an approval process, and too short an experimental period, becoming a system that "looks open but is actually conservative." ⁹

"Taiwan’s regulatory sandbox has one of the most complete legal frameworks in the world, but the problem is not the framework—it is the speed of execution."
— Chambers and Partners, Fintech 2025: Taiwan ⁹

The Payment War in Your Pocket

In 2026 Taiwan, walking into any convenience store and pulling out your phone to pay has become more common than pulling out a wallet.

According to FSC statistics, by the end of 2025, the total number of electronic payment account users across Taiwan reached 34.45 million people—on an island of 23 million people, this figure means most adults have at least one electronic payment account. The government’s target of "90% mobile payment penetration by 2025" has basically been met. ¹⁰

But "penetration" does not mean "unification." Taiwan’s mobile payment market is a chaotic battle:

LINE Pay, leveraging LINE’s social foundation, holds the top spot with over 8 million users. iPASS MONEY (from iPASS Ticketing) rose to first place in user numbers by leveraging its electronic ticketing base. Jiekou Pay, before the controversy erupted, still had over 6 million users. Add in All Pay, Allwin Pay, EasyWallet, Taiwan Pay, Apple Pay, and Google Pay—consumers have an average of three to four payment apps on their phones, and store counters are covered with QR code stickers from different brands. ¹¹

💡 Did You Know
Taiwan’s mobile payment fragmentation is partly due to convenience store systems aligning with specific partners: 7-ELEVEN promotes OPEN Wallet and icash Pay, while FamilyMart promotes Allwin Pay. The payment landscape of these two major supermarket chains essentially determines which app is in the pockets of Taiwan’s population.

This is completely different from China’s "Alipay + WeChat Pay" duopoly. Taiwan has no single dominant super-app; instead, there is a blossoming of many flowers—or, more honestly, a fragmentation among many warlords. Consumers are more convenient (they can swipe their phones everywhere), but integration efficiency is low, and every player is burning cash to grab market share.

Three Banks, NT$9 Billion in Tuition

In 2021, Taiwan welcomed the year of the pure online bank.

LINE Bank, LiTech Bank, and Future Bank (Jianglai Bank) opened successively. Their selling point is "no need to visit a bank branch"—online account opening, high-interest savings accounts, and 24-hour service, using technology to redesign the traditional banking experience.

Four years later, the numbers on the balance sheet are brutal: the three have accumulated losses exceeding NT$9 billion. ¹²

But the story of losses has different readings. LINE Bank’s user count reached 2.29 million, with a deposit-to-loan ratio of 85.93%. In December 2025, it achieved Taiwan’s first-ever monthly pre-tax profit among pure online banks—an amount of NT$11 million, small but symbolically significant. LINE Bank stated it aims to break NT$100 million in annual profit in 2026, eliminating accumulated losses within three and a half years. ¹³

Future Bank has 550,000 users, LiTech Bank has 320,000; the scale gap is obvious, but they are also narrowing losses. LiTech is approaching the capital increase red line and is planning a new round of capital injection. ¹⁴

📝 Curator’s Note
The dilemma of pure online banks is not unique to Taiwan. The challenge for challenger banks worldwide—from Monzo in the UK to Nubank in Brazil—is that the early stages involve burning cash for scale. The real question is: Taiwan’s market has only 23 million people, and the density of traditional banks is among the highest globally (more than one branch per square kilometer). Pure online banks must compete with 38 commercial banks for the same customer base. The NT$9 billion in tuition buys the opportunity to survive in this crowded market.

The Digital Hakka Coin: The Central Bank’s Caution

As central banks worldwide study digital currency (CBDC), Taiwan’s central bank has taken a very Taiwan-specific path.

In 2025, the central bank collaborated with the Ministry of Digital Affairs and the Hakka Affairs Council to launch the "Digital Hakka Coin" pilot—not issuing a digital New Taiwan dollar all at once, but first testing on a small scale across 11 counties/cities and 70 Hakka cultural key development zones. Users can spend using de-identified, anonymous wallets, valid until June 30, 2026. ¹⁵

Central Bank Governor Yang Chin-lung maintains a consistently cautious attitude. He stated the central bank will hold multiple public hearings and forums in 2025 to collect opinions from all sectors, but regarding the formal issuance of a digital New Taiwan dollar, there is "no specific timeline." ¹⁶

This rhythm of "test a small piece first, listen to opinions, then decide" forms a sharp contrast with China’s large-scale push of the digital yuan. Taiwan’s central bank does not want to be a pioneer; it wants to be the follower who makes no mistakes.

An Island’s Financial Experiment

Ten years have passed.

How much of the vision描绘 in the 2015 white paper—Taiwan becoming an Asia-Pacific FinTech hub—has been realized? The answer is: partially, but in a way different from what was originally imagined.

Mobile payments have indeed become widespread, but not through a single super-app, but through a chaotic battle of dozens of brands. Pure online banks have indeed arrived, but the three combined have fewer than 3.2 million users, a negligible proportion of total bank accounts in Taiwan. The regulatory sandbox has indeed operated, but the low graduation rate raises questions about whether it is a springboard or a display case.

Jiekou’s NT$3.6 billion storm made one thing clear: Taiwan’s FinTech’s greatest tension has never been a technical issue, but a trust issue. Too loose regulation breeds the next Jiekou; too tight regulation suffocates innovation in the sandbox.

In December 2025, LINE Bank reported its first month of profit, an amount small enough to be ignored, but the entire industry was watching. Hu Yijia, wearing an electronic ankle bracelet, and LINE Bank, counting its first profit, represent two entirely different endings occurring simultaneously on the same island, in the same industry.

Further Reading:

• Semiconductor Industry — Another industry that started with policy support and ultimately changed the global landscape
• Startup Ecosystem — The full picture of Taiwan’s startup circle, where Jiekou Pay resides
• E-commerce and Digital Payment Ecosystem — The e-commerce infrastructure behind mobile payments
• Taiwan Stock Market and Capital Markets — From shouting brokers to smartphone-based regular investment plans, the evolution of financial infrastructure and capital markets

References