E-banking transactions rise 22.8pc in Oct-Dec FY2022

KARACHI: Electronic banking transactions rose 22.8 percent to Rs33.4 trillion in the second quarter of this fiscal year helped by persistent inclination of customers towards use of digital payments, the central bank said on Friday.

These transactions stood at Rs27.2 trillion in the previous quarter.

Increasingly favorable behavioral trends of customers towards digital payments accelerated by the pandemic seem to be cementing, the State Bank of Pakistan’s second quarterly report of payment systems for the fiscal year 2021/22 said. It presents an encouraging picture of the adoption of digital banking in the country.

It said the volume of e-banking transactions grew 10.7 percent to 400 million. E-banking includes transactions conducted via electronic channels, including real-time online branches, ATMs, mobile banking, internet banking, call center banking, point of sale (POS) and e-commerce.

The number of mobile banking transactions amounted to 94 million, while the value reached Rs2.2 trillion, which comes to 18.8 percent and 35.4 percent growth respectively on a quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) basis. Meanwhile, the number of mobile banking users grew by five percent on a QoQ basis, reaching a total of 11.9 million users, the report said.

Number of internet banking users reached 6.9 million, conducting 33.8 million transactions, amounting to Rs2.4 trillion, which translated to a strong 13.9 percent progress in terms of volume and 28 percent increase in the value of these transactions compared to the preceding quarter, it added.

The retail sector also continued its upswing in adoption of digital payments. During October-December FY2022, a total of 31.4 million transactions amounting to Rs178.1 billion were processed via 92,153 POS terminals. This shows an impressive double-digit growth of 11.8 percent by volume and 32.1 percent by value.

Similarly, the number of e-commerce merchants also increased by 32.6 percent 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 growth of 7.2 percent by volume and 19.8 percent by value, according to the report.

As of end-December 2022, there were 5.4 percent more cards than the preceding quarter, reaching 48.6 million cards in circulation which mainly comprised of debit cards (63.5 percent), social welfare cards (22.8 percent), ATM only cards (9.9 percent), credit cards (3.6 percent), and prepaid cards (0.3 percent), the report noted.

“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 percent and 12.2 percent, respectively,” it said. However, paper-based transactions rose to Rs46.7 trillion in October-December FY2022 from Rs41.6 trillion a quarter ago.

During the second quarter of this fiscal year, the SBP’s real-time inter-bank settlement mechanism (PRISM), the large-value (wholesale) payments segment, processed a total of 1.1 million transactions amounting to Rs161.3 trillion, showing a growth of 5.9 percent in volume and 1.4 percent in value.