ITOCHU : Announces Launch of UUPON Shared Point Service in Taiwan
April 05, 2015 at 10:13 pm EDT
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April 1, 2015
ITOCHU Corporation (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo; Masahiro Okafuji, President & CEO; hereinafter "ITOCHU") announced today that UUPON Inc. (President: CJ Lee; hereinafter "UUPON") will begin offering a shared point service in Taiwan from April 1, 2015. ITOCHU and ITOCHU Taiwan Corporation (headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan; President: Hiroaki Yamashita; hereinafter "ITOCHU Taiwan") have jointly invested in UUPON together with EasyCard Investment Holding Co., Ltd. (President: Kenneth S. Lin; hereinafter "EasyCard"), which controls Taiwan's largest transportation card operator EasyCard, Chunghwa Telecom Co., Ltd. (Chairman & CEO: Rick L. Tsai; hereinafter "Chunghwa Telecom"), Taiwan FamilyMart Co., Ltd. (Chairman & CEO: Pan, Chin-ting; hereinafter "Taiwan FamilyMart"), Senao International Co., Ltd. (Founder & President: Paul Lin; hereinafter "Senao") and other investors.
UUPON is a point program offered via EasyCard, a payment system with more than 50 million cards issued in Taiwan. The points will be common to Chunghwa Telecom, Taiwan's largest telecom operator, Taiwan FamilyMart, the Taiwan's second largest chain of convenience stores and Senao, Taiwan's largest chain of cellphone and 3C products sales outlets. Customers will be able to use their earned points for product purchases and to receive services at all aforementioned stores. The shared point service involves major transportation card operators and large B-to-C companies offering programs beyond Group boundaries, the first pairing of this type in Taiwan, with the endeavor set to expand based on the perfect partnership that leverages the strengths of each company.
Moreover, as EasyCard has already achieved widespread adoption throughout Taiwan, users who wish to sign up for the UUPON point program only need to complete a membership registration to be able to use their EasyCard as a UUPON point card immediately.
Many competing point programs are operated in Taiwan, and with users struggling to cope with the wide range of point services available, companies have been unable to utilize the programs to their full potential. Meanwhile, with the costs associated with operating point programs growing each year, point standardization fulfills a need for users and businesses alike.
Utilizing a vast corporate network built up over 56 years of operating in Taiwan, ITOCHU and ITOCHU Taiwan will actively drive the widespread adoption of UUPON, which offers greater convenience to users and supports economic activity for businesses. Looking to the future, ITOCHU will also seek to deploy this business model in other Asian countries and expand the model to CRM and Big Data businesses incorporating point programs.
Itochu Corporation is a diversified group organized around 8 areas of activity:
- distribution of food products (34.9% of net sales): frozen food, vegetable oil, sweeteners, sugars, etc.;
- distribution of hydrocarbons (23.3%): hydrocarbons (natural gas, oil products, bioethanol, etc.). The group also develops manufacturing of chemical products activity;
- manufacturing and sale of industrial and construction machines, vehicles and ships (9.7%);
- production of metals and coal (8.5%);
- sale of consumer products (8.4%). The group also develops forest products sale and real estate development activities;
- distribution of computing and telecommunication equipments (7%): data transmission, Internet access, media content broadcasting and mobile telephony equipments. The group also offers financial services;
- sale of textile products (3.6%);
- other (4.6%).
Net sales are distributed geographically as follows: Japan (79.5%), Singapore (5.4%), the United States (4.5%), Australia (3.1%), China (2.8%) and other (4.7%).
ITOCHU CORPORATION 
