Taipei: Taiwan plans to add more NT$500 (US$15.69) prizes to its bimonthly cloud invoice lottery draw from July through December this year, a Ministry of Finance (MOF) official said Monday. The official, who declined to be named, stated that the scale of the increase will be announced before the September draw for July and August invoices, after reviewing overall budget and redemption rates for the first half of this year.
According to Focus Taiwan, the number of NT$500 prizes could be increased by 200,000 to 400,000, bringing the total to between 4.05 million and 4.25 million per draw. To encourage more consumers to store receipts digitally using mobile barcodes or other carriers, the MOF already added 700,000 additional NT$500 prizes to the cloud invoice lottery for each bimonthly draw from January to June. As a result, the total number of NT$500 prizes per draw rose to 3.85 million.
At a press conference held to announce an upgrade to the ministry's Uniform Invoice Redemption App, Fiscal Information Agency Director-General Chang Wen-hsi said the nationwide usage rate of electronic receipts had reached 67 percent as of June 15. Following the launch of the uniform invoice app on Jan. 1, 2019, it has been downloaded more than 8 million times, although it has not undergone a major update since then, Chang added.
The latest upgrade aims to improve the cloud invoice system and support the government's e-invoice policy by offering faster and more efficient services, he said. The interface has been redesigned based on user habits, with new features including a bilingual interface, automatic prize transfer for winning invoices, notifications of prize claims, among others, Chang added. According to the MOF, the updated app will be available from 6 a.m. on July 1.