The map is designed to improve the management capability of authorised agencies as well as provide useful information for road users.

To speed up the progress, the relevant agencies will fix shortcomings of pilot programmes to build its digital traffic map system, the Ha Noi Moi ( New Hanoi) newspaper reported.

A representative of the ministry’s Directorate for Roads of Vietnam said that in 2013, the agency worked with two domestic service providers to build a system to connect data from itinerary monitoring devices installed in 650,000 vehicles of transport firms; integrated with the system of road signs and the weighbridge system in the country.

However, there were inconsistencies between the two providers, so the programme was less effective than expected, he said. Two years later, the Vietnam Inland Waterway Administration also started its plan to build its digital waterway traffic map.

Due to lack of financial resources, the administration had built the map based on the free Google maps. And one major shortcoming was that it could not extract data from the administration map.

Pham Duy Ninh, director of the ministry’s Information and Technology Centre said the ministry’s policies of building the digital traffic map were now combining funds from the State and investment from private sectors.

This would help to fix the situation, he said.

The capital administration has already scheduled to turn Hanoi into a smart city by 2020. One of the prioritised parts of the plan was to set up the city’s digital traffic map.

To do that, the Hanoi People’s Committee in May gave the green light for the FPT Corporation’s project on building an intelligent transportation system (ITS) for the city. ITS is a combination of advanced technology and transport infrastructure to manage and operate the transportation system.

It includes a control centre, traffic monitoring systems, traffic information, as well as security, safety, and emergency management systems.

Parking zones

Also this month, a pilot programme that used software and automation technology to manage public parking zones was run on |two streets, Ly Thuong Kiet and Tran Hung Dao in Hoan Kiem District.

The programme, developed and implemented by the Ha Noi Car Park Exploitation Company, involves the digital mapping of car parking areas, the use of management software, and the installation of cameras to record vehicle registration plates in parking zones.

All information relating to car parks will be available online, and car owners will be able to find and book parking spaces in advance on devices such as smartphones and tablets.

The smart technology behind the system will also make it possible for vehicle owners to park their cars without help from parking staff.

Three weeks ago, the Ha Noi Transport Department and the Ha Noi Transport Corporation proposed to the People’s Committee a pilot programme on using an electronic transportation cards on BRT route 01, connecting the Kim Ma and Yen Nghia bus stations.

Travellers using e-cards tap them on a sensor to pay and can top up their e-cards at every bus station on the route.

This saves them having to purchase single journey tickets for every ride. The pilot programme is scheduled to run in September and October.

The digital wallet company, which claims to have more than 600,000 users in the territory and over 180,000 cash pick-up points across 13 countries, has set its sights on easing access to finance for the unbanked and under-banked population that is said to account for half of the world’s people.

More than 100,000 of the 600,000 TNG users are foreign domestic helpers who rely heavily on TNG digital wallets for remittance services, while more |than 75,000 users are real-name registered.

“The name ‘TNG’ stands for ‘the next generation’. We operate more like a traditional bank, offering an alternative option for people like me who had great difficulty opening up a bank account when I arrived in Hong Kong 10 years ago,” said Alex Kong, founder and chief executive of TNG.

TNG has joined a cluster of 16 firms – including mainland Internet behemoths Ant Financial, the financial affiliate of Alibaba Group, and Tencent Holdings – to be granted stored-value facilities licenses by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority last year, and vie for a share of the yet-to-be-tapped digital payment market in Hong Kong.

Spreading footprint

Kong said the company is looking to expand its business footprint to 100 countries and regions by year-end, and is beefing up its network of partners which already include Hong Kong-based retailers Maxim’s Cakes and 759 Store.

The company, which is poised to close a funding round with a targeted valuation of US$500 million and managed to be profitable this year – the second year of operations – is targeting a listing in either Hong Kong or New York in the coming three years.

Meanwhile, Alibaba’s affiliate company Ant Financial Services Group announced Wednesday that its mobile payment service, Alipay, aided by payment company Zapper, had become available in 10,000 stores in South Africa, Xinhua News Agency reported.

Chinese visitors whose smartphones are equipped with the Alipay app can scan Zapper QR codes at any of the stores to pay for their goods. Alipay entered South Africa on June 27, facilitating Chinese tourists buying sightseeing bus tickets.

Alipay service has been rolled out inside more than 200,000 bricks-and-mortar stores in over 30 countries and regions in Europe, the United States and South East Asia, according to Xinhua News Agency.

Huawei’s new chipset Kirin 970 is the world’s first smartphone artificial intelligent (AI) computing platform with a dedicated Neural Network Processing Unit (NPU), said Yu Chengdong, CEO Of Huawei Consumer Business Group.

Kirin 970, uses 10nm leading process technology and brings together classic computing, graphics, image and digital signal processing power, which typically required separate chips and took up more spaces.

Mate 10, the smartphone |powered by Kirin 970, which enables stronger image-recognition, will be launched on Oct 16 in Munich, Reuters reported, citing Yu.

The device will have improved camera and battery life.

The power consumption of the new chipset will be reduced by 20 per cent than its previous generation and the energy efficiency can be increased by 50 per cent, ifeng.com reported.

Ranked third

Although Huawei is a famous smartphone business ranked third, behind Apple Samsung and in the world, it is lesser known as a maker of chips for its own phones, said Wall Street Journal.

The newspaper added that the Mate 10 is set to compete against Apple for more profitable high-end phone market.

While Huawei’s rivals are likely working on chip upgrades as well, “making AI computation faster and more efficient will give Huawei an edge, if it can demonstrate improved performance or battery life when conducting everyday tasks,” said Tim Coulling, analyst at electronics-research firm Canalys as cited in Wall Street Journal.

Canalys’statistics show that Huawei had 10 per cent of the global market in the first quarter, behind Samsung’s 23 per cent and Apple’s 15 percent.

The sales of Huawei remains low in the US, although it is a major player in Europe.

However, the market share of Huawei in Chinese smartphone market has growing steadily, recapturing the top spot from Chinese brand Oppo in the |first quarter, while Apple is |losing ground, according to Canalys.

In addition to Huawei, Xiaomi is another Chinese company which has chip innovation ability, which has poured more than 1 billion yuan ($0.15 billion) into its chip business and launched its own in-house chipset Surge S1 in February.

A QR – quick response – code is a square barcode used increasingly for scanning all sorts of data on to smartphones, for instance.

According to a Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) statement, the council had its first meeting on August 11, where members advocated the use of QR code-based payments as a practical and convenient way to introduce e-payments to cash-based merchants.

QR codes are already being used for e-payments today. DBS, for example, has been encouraging small cash-based merchants like hawkers and market vendors to adopt QR codes as a payment method.

At the point of sale, the buyer scans the merchant’s displayed QR code with his phone. This automatically displays the merchant’s name in the DBS PayLah app and the buyer can then enter the payment amount. The payment is then deducted from the buyer’s DBS PayLah wallet to the merchant’s.

Since introducing QR code payments in Singapore in April and launching its partnership with ComfortDelGro taxis to encourage commuters to pay via QR codes, DBS is seeing over 15,000 QR code transactions a month via DBS PayLah.

What the task force is aiming for is a standardised QR code that can be read by any customer in Singapore, regardless of which banking app he is using.

OCBC Bank’s head of e-business, business transformation and fintech and innovation, Pranav Seth, said: “Diverging standards, leading to multiple QR codes at points of sale, lead to confusion for both consumers and merchants on what payment instruments to use, and how to use them.

“This slows down the pace of cashless adoption and the displacement of cash. As Singapore starts to adopt QR codes, this is an opportune time for us to standardise as an industry and avoid this confusion at an early stage.”

Indeed, MAS said in its statement that the council members agreed a common QR code could facilitate payments among different payment schemes, e-wallets and banks.

The SGQR Task Force, as it is known, will be co-led by the MAS and the Infocomm Media Development Authority and involve a broad range of stakeholders such as banks, payment schemes, QR payment service providers and relevant government agencies.

The task force aims to have in place by the end of this year standardised SGQR specifications to accept both domestic and international payment schemes.

It will also consider the governance structure and implementation strategy for QR payments.

Ravi Menon, MAS managing director and payment council chairman, said: “This is the kind of idea exchange and collaboration that we need within the ecosystem to realise our shared vision of an e-payments society. Our goal is to make the payments experience efficient for businesses and delightful for everyone, including the young and elderly.”

Joining Japan, China and some other Asian nations in trying to regulate crypto-currencies, the Financial Services Commission warned that the recent transaction volume and volatility of digital currencies are “excessive”.

The move by the FSC comes as the price of a bitcoin, the best-known digital currency, surged above $4,000 (Bt133,000) last month.

South Korea is home to one of the world’s largest bitcoin exchanges, with about 1 million people estimated to have the digital currency.

“There is a need for the government to cope with the virtual currencies to prevent them from being used as tools for crimes and simple speculative investment,” the state regulator said in a statement.

Despite a boom in transactions of digital currencies, the currencies remain largely unregulated, as they are not recognised as financial products. Also there are no rules protecting people who invest in digital money. As part of regulations against illicit transactions of digital currencies, South Korean banks will be required to strictly check the personal information of people who work at digital currency exchanges, the FSC said.

If there are suspicious transactions in their bank accounts, lenders will be required to report the transactions to authorities, it said.

If a small money-transfer operator wants to send money overseas using digital currency, the operator will report their daily transfer records to the Bank of Korea, the FSC said.