LINE: Taiwan's Digital Infrastructure Born from a Disaster

30-second overview: LINE is a messaging app born in Japan in the aftermath of the March 11, 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. It entered Taiwan the same year and seized the moment in 2013 when MSN shut down and WhatsApp switched to a paid model, swiftly replacing those former giants. Today, LINE's penetration rate among Taiwanese aged 15–65 stands at 93%. From family chats and elder-image culture to workplace group chats, LINE Pay mobile payments, and LINE Bank — it is Taiwan's de facto "digital infrastructure." But this deep dependence also brings disinformation, account hijacking, advertising overload, digital inheritance disputes, and market monopoly controversies, forcing society to reconsider the public responsibilities of a commercial platform.

On March 11, 2011, the Great East Japan Earthquake shattered communication networks but unexpectedly gave birth to LINE. The app, originally designed to help people stay connected during a disaster, officially launched in June that year and swept Taiwan's market within a year. ¹ Today, LINE's penetration rate among people aged 15–65 in Taiwan stands at 93%, with users opening the app an average of 14 times per day — heavy users as many as 22 times. ²

📝 Curator's note: In Taiwan, LINE has evolved from an app into a "digital survival right" — you can choose not to install Instagram, but it is very hard to choose not to install LINE.

Key Milestones and Social Impact of LINE in Taiwan

The Pivotal Moment: When MSN Died and WhatsApp Went Paid

LINE's rapid rise to dominance in Taiwan was not simply a matter of cute stickers. The real key was precisely capturing a market vacuum and understanding user psychology. In 2013, the once-dominant instant messaging platform MSN (Windows Live Messenger) announced it was shutting down, forcing users to migrate to Skype — and many users, unable to adapt, drifted away. ³ Around the same time, the other major competitor, WhatsApp, announced a shift to a paid model, creating a perfect opening for LINE, which had always maintained a "free forever" strategy and had been actively developing a localized interface. ⁴ Through endorsements by celebrity Gwei Lun-mei, plus the pioneering "read receipt" feature and a rich variety of expression stickers, LINE met Taiwanese users' demand for instant interaction and successfully captured the cultural preference for visual emotional expression.

The Sticker Economy: Digital Transformation of Taiwan's Illustration Industry

LINE stickers are not just communication tools — they have created a massive "sticker economy" in Taiwan. The LINE Creators Market, launched in 2014, allows grassroots creators to publish their work. By 2024, the number of Taiwanese creators had surpassed 1 million, with over 10 million sticker sets published. ⁵ Taiwan's top creators — such as "Chou Chou the White Cat" (白爛貓) — have accumulated sales exceeding NT$200 million. ⁶ This mechanism transformed how Taiwanese illustrators earn revenue, and it gave Taiwan's original IP an opportunity to reach international audiences through a digital platform.

Elder Images and Political Mobilization: The Social Power of Closed Groups

In Taiwan, LINE has evolved from a communication tool into a unique social and cultural landscape. The "elder image" (長輩圖) culture has become a striking phenomenon: these brightly colored, image-and-text greeting cards — morning greetings and "agree? share it" pictures — are the core social and emotional expression medium for middle-aged and elderly Taiwanese. ⁷ LINE's influence in Taiwan's political arena is equally significant. From local neighborhood chief elections to presidential campaigns, politicians actively manage official LINE accounts, viewing them as an important channel for direct communication with voters and consolidating support. Yet this high penetration has also made LINE's closed group chats a breeding ground for disinformation and political manipulation, with far-reaching effects on voter cognition and voting intentions — an urgent challenge in Taiwan's democratic process. ⁸

Financial Expansion: From LINE Pay to the First Profitable Pure Digital Bank

LINE's ambitions in Taiwan long ago extended beyond communication. Through LINE Pay, it reshaped Taiwan's mobile payment landscape, achieving high penetration even outside metropolitan areas. ⁹ LINE Bank (LINE Commercial Bank), which opened in 2021, leveraged LINE's ecosystem traffic and in December 2025 achieved a single-month pre-tax profit exceeding NT$11 million, becoming Taiwan's first profitable pure digital bank. ¹⁰ LINE Bank expects to achieve annual profits exceeding NT$100 million in 2026 and plans to initiate an IPO in 2028, demonstrating the strong momentum of its transition from a "backup account" to users' "primary account." ¹¹

Challenges and Controversies: Fraud, Privacy, Monopoly, and User Experience

However, deep dependence brings significant risks. LINE group chats have become a hotbed for disinformation and fraud in Taiwan — from content-farm political manipulation to impersonating neighbors for extortion, the black market thrives in closed groups. ⁸ LINE's privacy policy updates have also repeatedly triggered backlash, with user concerns about personal data flows and platform monopoly never fully resolved. ¹²

In recent years, LINE's commercialization strategy has also sparked user experience controversies. The constant increase of ads in the interface and the mandatory phone number binding for registration and login have frustrated some users. ¹³ On account security in particular, while LINE offers two-factor verification, remote logins cause other devices to automatically log out, and voicemail can be exploited by hackers to obtain verification codes — making account hijacking incidents common and raising user concerns about security. ¹⁴ This de facto monopoly, created by LINE's dominant market share, means that users who are unhappy with ads and security issues still find it extremely difficult to switch platforms, because virtually all family members, colleagues, and even government contacts are concentrated on LINE. ¹⁵

To offer more advanced features, LINE launched a paid subscription service, "LINE Premium," in Taiwan in March 2026 at NT$165 per month. Premium features include cross-device chat backup, invisible message recall, 100 GB advanced backup, original-quality photo albums, and custom fonts and icons. ¹⁶ While it offers various conveniences, the market remains divided on its value and necessity: some users find the features practical, while many question whether NT$165 monthly is worthwhile — especially given that the free tier is already filled with ads. ¹⁷

A new controversy is that of "digital inheritance." When a user passes away, the legal status of their LINE account's conversation history, paid sticker assets, and LINE Pay balance in Taiwan remains legally ambiguous. ¹⁸ Because LINE accounts are tightly bound to phone numbers, once a number is cancelled, the associated digital assets may disappear with it — a thorny intersection of inheritance rights and privacy in the digital age. ¹⁹

In an attempt to diversify, LINE has also launched the short-video platform LINE VOOM, aiming to compete with TikTok and Instagram Reels, but traffic and user reception in Taiwan remain polarized. ²⁰

When a commercial software platform effectively carries the functions of national-level communication infrastructure, its security and public nature become long-term issues that Taiwanese society must confront.

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