KARACHI, The digital payment ecosystem of Pakistan continued to grow as the overall e-banking transactions witnessed a healthy growth of 59 percent by value during the FY22.

According to Annual Payment Systems Report for the fiscal year 2021-22 released by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) on Friday, the journey from cash-intensive economy to a digital economy continued as more and more people are moving towards mobile and internet banking. During FY22, Banks and MFBs processed 1,611.8 million e-banking transactions amounting to Rs. 137.9 trillion in value: an increase of 36 percent by volume and 59.4 percent by value on YoY basis.

Real-Time Online Branches (RTOB) transactions contribution was the largest in total e-banking transactions value with a share of 76.4 percent followed by Mobile Banking 8.6 percent and Internet Banking 7.4 percent.

RTOB channel is the most common e-banking facility in the country. Number of transactions increased to 207.2 million in FY22 compared to 186.6 million in FY21. Similar increasing trend is found in value as it increased from Rs. 67.3 trillion in FY21 to Rs. 105.3 trillion FY22.

In terms of percentage growth, volume increased by 11 percent while value increased by 56.5 percent on YoY basis. Bifurcation of RTOB transactions showed that by value, Intra-Bank Funds Transfers transactions contributed Rs. 79.0 trillion (75 percent), Cash deposits Rs. 17.9 trillion (17 percent) and Cash withdrawals Rs. 8.5 trillion with 8 percent share.

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The report mentioned e-banking channel was mainly utilized for online funds transfer. During FY22, the number of funds transfer transactions through digital channels reached to 489.1 million which is 80 percent higher than FY21. By value, it grew by 75 percent on YoY basis reaching to Rs. 98.9 trillion by the end of FY22.

This presents major developments in the payments ecosystem of the country accompanied by overall summary of transactions. Internet banking users have reached to 8.4 million while mobile banking users grew to 12.3 million during FY22 with a growth of 60 percent and 13.5 percent respectively as compared to FY21.

In terms of transactions, mobile phone banking increased by 100 percent to 387.5 million, while internet banking grew by 52 percent to 141.7 million during the year.

By value, mobile phone banking and internet banking growth was 141 percent and 81 percent, thus, reaching to Rs11.9 trillion and Rs10.2 trillion, respectively. E-commerce transactions also witnessed similar trends as the volume grew by 107 percent to 45.5 million and the value by 75 percent to Rs106 billion.

In continuation of its efforts to promote and enhance digital payment system in the country, SBP launched Raast Person-to-Person (P2P), which enabled payments among individuals, businesses and other entities to settle transactions in real-time. According to the report, as of Jun-22, there were 15 million registered P2P Raast users, carrying out 7.9 million transactions amounting to Rs102.1 billion in value.

During FY22, a total of 32,958 POS machines were deployed in the country which led to an expansion of its network by 46 percent to 104,865. E-commerce merchants registered with the banks increased to 4,887 from 3,003 merchants during this period. ATMs network in the country also grew by 5 percent during the year reaching to 17,133 ATMs.

The total number of transactions, through POS, 137.5 million was 54 percent higher than previous fiscal year with transaction value reaching Rs0.7 trillion growing by 56 percent. A total of 692.3 million transactions were carried out through ATMs which amounted to Rs9.6 trillion, 19 percent higher than FY21.

There were 42.4 million payment cards in circulation in FY22 including 71.1% or 30.16 million debit cards; 24 percent or 10.3 million social welfare cards; 4 percent or 1.79 million credit cards and the rest were pre-paid and ATM only cards.

Number of large-value transactions through Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system of Pakistan reached to 4.37 million by FY22 amounting to Rs681.6 trillion with an annual growth of 53 percent in value. During FY22, paper-based transactions declined by 1 percent in volume though its value grew to Rs190.4 trillion, almost 26 percent higher than last year.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022

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