Continued growth in digital banking and declining trend in non-digital banking volume Photo: File
Karachi: State Bank of Pakistan has released its third Quarterly Review of the Payment System for the financial year 2022-23, covering the period January to March 2023. The light is on.
According to the review, increased collaboration between banks and fintech companies has provided efficient, accessible and rich digital payments platforms for consumers, allowing more consumers to use digital channels for payments.
By the end of the third quarter of FY23, the number of internet banking users was 9.3 million, mobile phone banking 15.3 million and branchless banking app users 48.4 million. In addition, the number of users of e-wallets (issued by electronic money institutions) reached 1.6 million.
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The number of users using Direct for online person-to-person funds transfer increased to 29.2 million from 25.8 million users in the previous quarter, the value of person-to-person transactions processed through Direct during the quarter And the volume increased by 92.3% and 55.6% respectively to 41.2 million transactions i.e. 872.8 billion rupees.
During the third quarter of FY23, overall e-banking transactions grew by 4.3% in volume and 11.2% in value.
The volume of Internet and mobile banking transactions also increased from 200.7 million to 220.5 million (a 9.9% increase), while the value increased from Rs 9,167.6 billion to Rs 10,922.3 billion (a 19.1% increase).
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The number of transactions through the point of sale also saw an increase, with a 6.8 percent increase in transaction volume and a 10.1 percent increase in value. Although ATM transactions remained close to the previous quarter in terms of volume, they increased by 6.0% in terms of value.
The average ticket size for transactions through POS was Rs 5,463 per transaction while for ATM-based transactions, the volume was Rs 15,429 per transaction.
The value of e-commerce transactions processed by banks increased by 7.1%, reaching Rs 36.6 billion by the end of the third quarter of FY23. By the end of the third quarter of FY23, 112,302 POS machines had been installed across the country as against 96,975 POS machines in the same quarter last year.
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The number of ATMs installed in the country also increased from 16,897 in Q3FY22 to 17,678 in Q3FY23.
Processing through Pakistan’s Real-Time Gross Settlement System, a timely system for large value settlements, increased by 4.6 percent in volume and 13.9 percent in value compared to the previous quarter.
Further, the volume of paper-based transactions declined to 94.3 million in the third quarter from 95.5 million in the second quarter of FY23. However, its value increased by Rs 1,646.6 billion (3.0 percent) during the quarter.
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