KARACHI: Overall e-banking transactions increased by both volume and value during the third quarter of fiscal year 2022-23 due to increasing collaboration between banks and fintech companies and the provision of efficient, accessible and user-friendly digital payments platform for customers.
The State Bank of Pakistan, in its third quarterly review of Payment Systems stated that the volume of overall e-banking transactions increased by 4.3% while the value of the transactions surged by 11.2%.
The quarterly review covered the period January to March 2023 and presents major highlights and comprehensive analysis of the payments ecosystem.
As of quarter-end Q3 of FY23, there were 9.3 million internet banking, 15.3 million mobile phone banking and 48.4 million branchless banking app users, the review summarised adding that holders of e-wallets- issued by Electronic Money Institutions (EMIs) – reached 1.6 million.
According to the review increasing collaboration between banks and fintech companies has provided an efficient, accessible and user-friendly digital payments platform for customers, allowing a greater number of customers to use digital channel for making payments.
Customers using Raast for online Person-to-Person (P2P) funds transfer have increased to 29.2 million users from 25.8 million users in the previous quarter while P2P value and volume of transactions processed through Raast during the quarter grew by 92.3% and 55.6% reaching to 41.2 million transactions amounting to Rs. 872.8 billion respectively, the quarterly review stated.
Internet and Mobile Phone banking transactions volume also grew from 200.7 million to 220.5 million depicting a growth of 9.9% while value increased from Rs. 9,167.6 billion to Rs. 10,922.3 billion showing a 19.1% increase.
The number of transactions through Point-of-Sale (POS) also witnessed growth with transactions volume increasing by 6.8% and value by 10.1%.
ATMs transactions, however, remained close to the previous quarter by volume but by value, it increased by 6.0%, the review indicated adding that the average ticket size of transactions through POS was Rs. 5,463 per transaction while for ATM-based transactions, it was Rs15,429 per transaction.
Value of e-Commerce transactions processed by banks witnessed an increase of 7.1% and reached Rs 36.6 billion by the end of quarter Q3 FY23, it further added.
The number of POS machines installed across the country reached 112,302 by the end of Q3-FY23 while there were 96,975 POS machines in the same quarter last year. The number of ATMs installed in the country also increased from 16,897 in Q3 FY22 to 17,678 in Q3 FY23.
Large Value Settlements processed through RTGS (PRISM), the real-time gross settlement system of Pakistan, increased by 4.6% in volume and 13.9% in value as compared to the previous quarter.
Further, the volume of paper-based transactions declined from 95.5 million in Q2 FY23 to 94.3 million in Q3 FY23. However, its value increased by Rs 1,646.6 billion (3.0%) during the quarter.
