blockchain

The second session, titled “Infrastructure Development and Regulatory Challenges of Emerging Payment Instruments,” was moderated by Deputy Director Chao-Hung Chen of CIEL. The panel featured Kuo-Liang Lin, Chairperson of the Financial Information Service Co.; Quincy Chen, Chief Digital Officer of Cathay United Bank; and Darren Wang, Founder of the OwlTing Group. Drawing on perspectives from financial market infrastructure, banking practice, and startup experience, the panel examined the institutional challenges and future possibilities arising from innovations in payment systems.

Founder Wang shared his experience with cross-border stablecoin applications, noting that while stablecoins offer clear advantages in improving the efficiency and immediacy of cross-border remittances, significant challenges remain, including compliance procedures, anti-money laundering (AML) requirements, cross-chain settlement, and fiat currency conversion. Chairperson Lin observed from a financial infrastructure perspective that the evolution of payment instruments is fundamentally a process of continuous digitalization, and that the potential of stablecoins to enhance settlement speed and efficiency represents a trend that existing systems must directly address. From a banking perspective, CDO Chen emphasized that customers place the highest priority on immediacy, stability, and uninterrupted service—particularly in corporate and cross-border financial contexts. While blockchain and stablecoins offer efficiency gains, he noted that their adoption must proceed cautiously within sound risk management and compliance frameworks.

The third session, titled “Infrastructure Development and Regulatory Challenges of AI in Finance,” was moderated by Chief Executive Officer Chung-Chia Huang of CIEL. The panel featured Yi-Chun Shih, Deputy Director of the Department of Development and Innovation, Financial Supervisory Commission; Tzu-Hsiung Wang, Director at the Science and Technology Law Institute; and Shih-Ming Lo, Chief Compliance Officer at HSBC Taiwan. The discussion focused on the practical applications of artificial intelligence in finance, as well as the associated regulatory and institutional challenges.

During the discussion, CCO Lo noted that financial institutions currently rely primarily on machine learning, which is widely applied to internal process optimization, customer service and wealth management chatbots, as well as AML and fraud prevention. He emphasized that model explainability and continuous validation remain indispensable. Deputy Director Shih explained that AI is also being applied in areas such as credit analysis, underwriting and claims processing, and investment management. However, due to risks associated with generative AI—including hallucinations, inaccuracies, and personal data protection concerns—its current use is largely limited to internal support functions. Regulators have therefore adopted a guidance-first, risk-based supervisory approach. Director Wang highlighted that financial institutions’ heavy reliance on third-party suppliers for AI development may give rise to concentration and single-point-of-failure risks, underscoring the need for institutional design to balance outsourcing management with operational resilience.

Discussions in Sessions II and III concluded successfully, with each session focusing on two critical fintech themes—payment innovation and artificial intelligence—while showcasing diverse perspectives from government, industry, and academia on infrastructure development, regulatory flexibility, and risk governance. Building on the valuable insights shared by the panelists, CIEL will continue to advance its research efforts with the aim of contributing concretely to the future development of legal and regulatory frameworks.

On December 15, 2025, CIEL hosted the 2025 Enterprise Law Innovation Salon, bringing together representatives from government, industry, and academia to engage in dialogue on key topics including real-world assets (RWA), cross-border payments, stablecoins, and artificial intelligence. The salon opened with welcoming remarks by Professor Wang-Ruu Tseng, Vice President of National Taiwan University and Director of CIEL. Professor Tseng emphasized that a central purpose of the salon was to shape the Center’s research agenda for the coming year through cross-sector exchange. She further expressed the expectation that financial regulatory authorities, in the course of policy formation, could draw on international practices by establishing advisory committees, issuing policy white papers, and conducting public consultations. Such mechanisms, she noted, would enable deeper regulatory research and facilitate open dialogue with industry, thereby enhancing the professionalism, transparency, and market responsiveness of regulatory frameworks.

The opening session continued with remarks by Chairperson Jin-Lung Peng of the Financial Supervisory Commission. Chairperson Peng affirmed the salon’s focus on the regulation of financial market infrastructure and shared the regulator’s overarching supervisory approach to real-world assets, emerging payment instruments, and artificial intelligence. He underscored the guiding principle of “neither rushing ahead nor falling behind,” under which pilot programs and institutional discussions should be advanced in a measured and orderly manner. Using a basketball analogy, Chairperson Peng illustrated the complex relationship between industry development and rule-making, observing that many fintech innovations require the prior establishment of legal frameworks and foundational institutions in order to develop smoothly. His remarks highlighted the critical importance of legal and institutional innovation. Chairperson Peng concluded by reaffirming the significance of CIEL’s establishment and recognizing the Center’s role and contributions in advancing research on financial regulation and innovation.

Following the remarks by the two distinguished guests, Session I of the salon formally commenced. The first session, titled “Infrastructure Development and Regulatory Challenges of Real-World Assets,” was moderated by Deputy Director Yang. The panel featured Zhong-Hao Huang, Deputy Director General of the Securities and Futures Bureau (SFB) ; Hui-Hua Pai, Director of Legal Affairs and Compliance at the Taiwan Depository and Clearing Corporation (TDCC); and Hung-Chih Chen, Project Manager at the Bank of Taiwan. The panel explored the development of RWA infrastructure and the associated practical challenges from regulatory, financial market infrastructure, and banking perspectives.

During the session, Deputy Director General Huang outlined the SFB’s regulatory planning for security-token RWA, addressing potential supervisory issues across various stages, including the legal characterization of property rights, issuance and reissuance, over-the-counter trading, custody, and settlement. He also provided a comparative assessment of different blockchain architectures and their respective advantages and limitations. Director Pai drew on the TDCC’s experimental work with security-token RWA to highlight potential civil law property issues, such as the applicability of enforcement, liquidation, and inheritance regimes to tokenized securities. She further explained the role that the TDCC could play in bridging on-chain and off-chain systems, enabling investors to access securities recorded under different ledger structures. Project Manager Chen shared insights from the Bank of Taiwan’s ongoing gold RWA project, illustrating the practical impact of RWA on clearing, settlement, and the optimization of financial market infrastructure, while also identifying emerging challenges related to competition from non-bank entities, personal data protection, anti-money laundering compliance, and asset exit mechanisms.

The discussion in Session I concluded successfully. Looking ahead, CIEL will continue to facilitate dialogue among academia, practitioners, and regulatory authorities through conferences and industry salons, providing an important foundation for future research and institutional development.

From February 4 to 7, 2025, Deputy Director Professor Yueh-Ping Yang of our Center was invited to participate in the Transnational Program organized by the Faculty of Law, Waseda University. He delivered a lecture titled “FinTech’s Challenges to Financial Regulation: An Accountability Perspective” to the participants of the program.

The Transnational Program is a long-standing international short-term course hosted annually by Waseda University’s Faculty of Law. The 2025 program focused on the theme of financial technology (FinTech) and was jointly organized by Professor Shuichi Furuya, Director of the Graduate School of Law at Waseda University, and Professor Atsushi Koide. Participants included faculty members and students from National Taiwan University (Taiwan), Seoul National University (Korea), Queen Mary University of London (United Kingdom), Bucerius Law School in Hamburg (Germany), and Waseda University (Japan). The program featured lectures and student group presentations on various FinTech-related issues.

In his lecture, Deputy Director Yueh-Ping Yang highlighted how the emergence of FinTech—characterized by the cross-border nature of the internet, the decentralization of blockchain, and the automation of artificial intelligence—has diluted and restructured the traditional “regulatory intermediaries” upon which financial supervision has long relied. This transformation poses significant challenges to conventional accountability frameworks in financial regulation.

Deputy Director Yang further proposed several potential directions for regulatory adaptation. These include: (1) direct regulation of FinTech providers, (2) indirect regulation of FinTech providers through traditional financial institutions, and (3) technical regulation conducted in cooperation with non-financial regulatory authorities.