Taiwanese NFC Joint Venture Finally Chooses Chairman, but Ecosystem Remains Unsettled

NFC Times Exclusive: A former general manager of Taipei’s large contactless transit ticketing and closed-loop payment scheme, EasyCard, has been named chairman of an NFC joint venture set up by Taiwan’s five mobile operators and EasyCard Corp., NFC Times has learned.

Jason Lin, who also previously headed the Taiwanese capital’s department of transportation, was a compromise choice to chair the joint venture, which could not agree on a chairman among representatives of its competing mobile operators. 

With the selection of Lin and hiring in August of a chief executive to run the venture, Patrick Hsu, the group can now move forward with a delayed request for proposal to hire a TSM to support expected rollouts of NFC services next year. Hsu was a former sales director for Hewlett-Packard Taiwan and former sales manager at IBM Taiwan.

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