Mobile banking transactions surge 35% by December 2021

The transactions through mobile phone banking witnessed a sharp surge of 35.4 per cent to around Rs3 trillion during the quarter ended December 31, 2021, according to a report on the payment system released by the State Bank of Pakistan.

The value of transactions made through mobile phone banking was Rs2.16 trillion during the previous quarter ended September 30, 2021.

The volume of mobile phone banking also recorded a growth of 18.8 per cent to 94 million transactions during the quarter ended December 31, 2021, compared with 79.1 million transactions in the previous quarter.

The mobile phone banking is a major component of e-banking in Pakistan. The e-banking value grew 22.8 per cent for the quarter ended December 31, 2021. The total value of e-banking surged to Rs33.38 trillion for the quarter under review, compared with Rs27.19 trillion in the previous quarter.

The State Bank said that in the second quarter of the fiscal year 2021/22, Pakistan’s payment ecosystem continued to show growth in all the major areas.

It has been attributed to concerted efforts by the central bank to push the digital payments adoption that had been paying off, as e-banking grew 10.7 per cent in terms of volume and 22.8 per cent in terms of value.

“The increasingly favourable behavioural trends of the customers towards digital payments accelerated by the pandemic seems to be cementing, as the usage of internet and mobile banking both achieved a double-digit growth of 13.9 per cent and 18.8 per cent by volume and 28 per cent and 35.4 per cent by value, respectively,” the SBP said.

This uptake in e-banking was majorly spurred by 11.9 million mobile banking users and 6.9 million internet banking users, which amounts to a 5 per cent and 0.3 per cent increase on a quarter on quarter (QoQ) basis, the central bank added.

The retail sector also continued to show promising growth.

“The improvement in infrastructure and the shifting customers’ behaviour pushed the point of sale (POS) and e-commerce transactions higher,” the SBP said, adding that the number of POS machines increased to 92,153, which is 16.5 per cent higher than the preceding quarter.

A total of 31.4 million transactions worth Rs178.1 billion were conducted via the POS machines. The number of e-commerce merchants reached 3,968, which amounts to 32.6 per cent increase on a QoQ basis.

“This increase mainly came from the onboarding of QR merchants,” the SBP said.

The number of e-commerce transactions (card not present) also increased to 13.6 million by volume and Rs26.7 billion in value. This amounts to 27.2 per cent progress in terms of volume and 19.8 per cent increase in the value of these transactions.

The central bank said that by the end of December 2021, a total of 48.7 million cards were in circulation, which mainly comprised debit cards (63.5 per cent), social welfare cards (22.8 per cent), ATM cards (9.8 per cent), credit cards (3.6 per cent) and prepaid cards (0.3 per cent). During the quarter, an increase of 3.4 per cent in volume of paper-based transactions and 12.2 per cent increase in the value of paper-based transactions was also observed.

Key facts

Population ……………………………………….  212 million

Currency in circulation …………………..  Rs7.3 trillion

Number of bank accounts ………………….  62,884,091

No of branchless
banking accounts ……………………………… 78,809,319

Number of banks ……………………………………… 16,714

Branches ………………………………………………………  44

Commercial and specialised banks ……………….. 33

Branches ………………………………………………..  15,474

Microfinance bank …………………………………………. 11

Branches 1,239