KARACHI: The e-banking based transactions have increased by 23 per cent to Rs33.38 trillion during the quarters of October – December 202 as compared with Rs27.19 trillion in the previous quarter (July – September 2021), the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) said on Friday.
The SBP issued quarterly report stating that the volume of e-banking recorded 10.7 per cent to 400 million transactions as compared with previous quarter of 361.6 million.
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E-banking includes transactions conducted via electronic channels including real-time online Branches, ATMs, mobile banking, internet banking, call center banking, POS and e-Commerce.
It would be pertinent to note that the growth in e-banking transactions is much steeper relative to paper based transactions, albeit the value of transactions is higher in the case of later.
The volume and value of paper based transactions increased by 3.4 per cent and 12.2 per cent respectively.
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While the volume of e-banking transactions is almost four times higher at 400 million than paper based transactions at 101.4 million, the value of transactions of the former stands at Rs33.4 trillion compared with Rs41.6 trillion paper based transactions.
All around growth in e-banking included expansion in both mobile and internet banking with a double-digit increase in value and volume of transactions during the second quarter. The number of mobile banking transactions amounted to 94 million, while the value reached Rs2.2 trillion, which comes to 18.8 per cent and 35.4 per cent growth respectively on QoQ basis. Meanwhile, number of mobile banking users grew by 5 per cent on QoQ basis, reaching a total of 11.9 million users. The internet banking users reached 6.9 million, conducting 33.8 million transactions, amounting to Rs2.4 trillion, which translate to a strong 13.9 per cent progress in terms of volume and 28 per cent increase in the value of these transactions compared to preceding quarter.
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Retail sector also continued its upswing in adoption of digital payments. During the quarter, a total of 31.4 million transactions amounting to Rs178.1 billion were processed via 92,153 Point-of-Sale (POS) terminals. This shows an impressive double-digit QoQ growth of 11.8 per cent by volume and 32.1 per cent by value. Similarly, the number of e-Commerce merchants also increased by 32.6 per cent reaching a total of 3,968. Onboarding of QR merchants largely added to this growth. These merchants processed 13.6 million transactions worth Rs26.7 billion, showing QoQ growth of 7.2 per cent by volume and 19.8 per cent by value.
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As of end-December 2022, there were 5.4 per cent more cards than the preceding quarter, reaching 48.6 million cards in circulation which mainly comprised of Debit Cards (63.5 per cent), Social Welfare Cards (22.8 per cent), ATM only Cards (9.9 per cent), Credit Cards (3.6 per cent), and Prepaid Cards (0.3 per cent). During this quarter, paper based transactions showed relatively slower growth of 3.4 per cent in volume and 12.2 per cent in value on QoQ basis. In Large-value (wholesale) payments segment, SBP’s Real-time Inter-Bank Settlement Mechanism (PRISM) processed a total of 1.1 million transactions amounting to Rs161.3 trillion, showing QoQ growth of 5.9 per cent in volume and 1.4 per cent in value.
