TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Taiwan has already launched 584 bilingual bank branches as part of a government effort to turn the country bilingual by 2030, the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) said Wednesday (Sept. 21).

FSC Chairman Huang Tien-mu (黃天牧) said the transformation of business culture and competitiveness had been realized through encouragement and not through coercion, CNA reported. He made the remarks during a visit to two bilingual banks in Taipei City.

By June, 22 banks had devoted 584 of their branches to bilingual service, an increase of 412 since the end of 2020. Huang said the banks had voluntarily launched the movement, without being forced to list the change as part of their key performance indicators (KPI). He added that publicly available information should be bilingual, or even multilingual.

In the age of digitalization, many bank transactions no longer take place in person at the branch office, but at the banks’ websites, so the convenience of online bilingual service was also a key factor, the FSC chief said.