Pakistan’s decision to shut down internet services in the country has had severe repercussions for the mobile phone banking sector, leading to substantial financial losses.
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Internet banking posts 20% growth in 3Q: State Bank
KARACHI: The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has said that the transactions of internet banking posted 20 per cent growth in the third quarter of the current fiscal year.
According to the report the transaction volume of internet banking increased to Rs2.9 trillion by end of quarter January – March 2022 as compared with Rs2.42 trillion in the quarter October – December 2021.
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The SBP released its third quarterly report of Payment Systems for the Fiscal year 2021-22 on Thursday covering the period January to March 2022. The report presents an overall viewpoint of growing digital adoption in the country as SBP continues to promote robust and efficient payments ecosystem in the country.
During the quarter under review (Q3-FY22), total e-banking transactions witnessed a growth of 2.6 per cent in volume and 6.5 per cent in value on QoQ basis while the overall growth was 32.7 per cent in volume and 57.5 per cent in value on YoY basis.
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Further bifurcation shows that a major portion of this growth was driven by continuing widening in internet banking and mobile banking transactions. Number of registered internet banking users reached 7.6 million showing a growth of 10.6 per cent resulting in a double digit-growth of 13.5 per cent and 19.9 per cent in volume and value of transactions respectively on QoQ basis.
Through this channel a total 38.3 million transactions worth Rs. 2,906.9 billion were processed. Mobile banking transactions volume was 101.5 million with value of Rs. 3,085.8 billion which amounted to a growth of 8.1 per cent and 5.4 per cent respectively on QoQ basis.
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Under retail sector, POS transactions continued to show an upward trend. During this period, number of POS terminals installed reached to 96,975 as compared to 92,153 in the previous quarter, showing an increase of 5.2 per cent.
Through these POS terminals, a total of 38.3 million transactions were processed that amounted to Rs. 189.7 billion in value. This shows quarterly growth of 21.9 per cent in volume and 6.5 per cent in value of transactions.
Number of ATMs reached 16,897 with transactions volume and value of 171.3 million and Rs. 2,437.0 billion respectively. Similarly, number of e-commerce merchants on boarded with banks also showed a double-digit growth of 12.0 per cent reaching to 4,445.
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A total of 9.1 million e-commerce transactions were conducted which amounted to Rs. 27 billion during the quarter. Both volume and value showed an impressive growth of 62.8 per cent and 77.1 per cent respectively, on YoY basis, in case of e-commerce transactions.
Paper based transactions declined by -2.9 per cent in volume though its value remained almost at the same level posting only 0.6 per cent growth over the previous quarter. In case of RTGS (PRISM), the real-time gross settlement system of Pakistan, a total of 1.08 million transactions amounting to PKR 155.7 trillion were processed.
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A total of 47.2 million payment cards were in circulation at the quarter end of Q3-FY22. Those payment cards mostly comprised of debit cards (62.3 per cent), social welfare cards (23.3 per cent), ATM only cards (10.3 per cent), credit cards (3.7 per cent) and lastly Pre-paid cards (0.3 per cent).
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Mobile, internet banking transactions grow more than double: SBP
KARACHI: The value of mobile banking, internet banking and e-commerce transactions all more than doubled during the third quarter of 2020/2021 when compared with the same period last year, State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) said on Monday.
Encouragingly, the number of internet and mobile banking users has also been increasing significantly, up 30.5 percent and 20.3 percent respectively during Q3FY21 over same period last year.
The State Bank of Pakistan released its Quarterly Payment System Review (QPSR) for the third quarter, January – March 2021, of the fiscal year 2020-21 today, which shows strong growth in the space of digital financial transactions in the country.
During Q3FY21, bank customers performed 309.5 million e-Banking transactions, valuing Rs22.5 trillion and registering growth rates of 31 percent by volume and 29 percent by value over the same quarter last year.
Most of the uptake in e-banking transactions was seen in internet banking and mobile banking transactions. The volume of mobile banking transactions reached 51.7 million, (up 144 percent) valuing Rs1.3 trillion (up 178 percent) compared to 21.2 million transactions valuing 467.5 billion in the same quarter, last year.
The number of registered mobile phone banking users reached 9.8 million showing an increase of 20 per cent from the same period last year. Similarly, 24.5 million internet banking transactions valuing Rs1.5 trillion were recorded during this period compared to Rs0.75 trillion in the same quarter last year, registering a growth of 74 per cent by volume and 109 per cent by value.
In response to SBP’s measures to incentivize the installation of Point of Sale (POS) machines to facilitate digital payments through debit or credit cards in the country, the number of POS machines have shown a substantial growth of 37 percent when compared with the same period last year. On these POS machines, 25 million card-based transactions amounting to Rs124 billion were processed showing an increase of 28 percent by volume and 21 percent by value compared to the same quarter last year.
The increase in the number of POS machines this year can be attributed to the measures that SBP took early last year which included the reduction in interchange fee on debit card payments thus improving the share of acquirers from overall merchant discount rate (MDR).
Non-cash based e-commerce transactions also increased substantially in the country during Q3FY21; e-commerce merchants processed 5.6 million transactions digitally amounting to Rs15.3 billion compared to 2.8 million transactions valuing Rs7.1 billion in Q3FY20, showing an increase of 100 percent by volume and 115 percent by value from the last year.
Total number of payment cards issued in the country stood at 44.5 million out of which 28.6 million are debit cards and 1.7 million are credit cards. Further, 6.4 million social welfare cards have been issued by banks on behalf of BISP, EOBI, Ehsaas and other government organizations and schemes.
It is worth mentioning that during the last few years, digital payment transactions in Pakistan have shown significant growth, reflecting the impact of favorable policies of SBP to incentivize customers.
Expansion in digital payment infrastructure as well as emergence of new payment aggregators have also played their role in this growth. In line with its declared objectives to digitize payment and financial services, SBP will continue promoting digitization in the country and expects the industry to e reciprocate the efforts that will in turn increase convenience for people of Pakistan.
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FBR issues procedure for making payment through internet, ATM, mobile banking
ISLAMABAD: Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has issued procedure for payment of duty and taxes through alternate delivery channels (ADC) including internet banking, ATM and mobile banking.
The FBR said that it had launched the system of payment of taxes through ADC under which taxpayers would now be able to make payments of federal taxes and duties i.e. income tax, sales tax, customs duty and Federal Excise Duty (FED) from any commercial bank account through internet banking, ATM, mobile banking and contact centers/
Availability of these options will improve the efficiency of the system, provide convenience for taxpayers and improve ease of doing business in Pakistan.
The FBR outlined the process for making payment for the convenience of all stakeholders:
Taxpayer will login to the FBR system (https://e.fbr.gov.pk) and prepared the PSID as before. However, he / she will select the ADC payment mode on the PSID;
Taxpayer will note down the PSID number for further processing;
Taxpayer will login to the online banking system of his/her bank through computer or mobile phone or visit ATM facility. The bill payment screen of the bank shall reflect ‘FBR’ as biller. The taxpayer shall click the option ‘FBR’. The bank/ATM screen shall require the taxpayer to enter the PSID number. The screen will appear for making payment to FBR.
By entering PSID, the payment details shall be visible to the taxpayer for approval of the payment of taxes. Upon confirmation, the bank account of taxpayer shall be debited and a message of successful transaction shall be visible on the screen;
Within three hours of confirmation, the payment will be marked as paid. A CPR will be provided to the taxpayer through e-mail and confirmation message sent on SMS. At the same time CPR will be available on FBR system for further use.