KARACHI: The State Bank of Pakistan, Friday, said that ongoing transformation of Pakistan’s payment landscape towards digital payments underwent significant advancements as share of digital payments surged to 84% during fiscal year 2023-24.
The central bank, in its ‘Annual Payment Systems Review – FY24’ report issued here, attributed the continued growth of digital payments during the period from July 2023 to June 2024 to the increasing accessibility and adoption of digital payment channels as well as introduction of new and innovative products and services offered by Electronic Money Institutions (EMIs) and Branchless Banking (BB) players.
The retail payments have seen extraordinary growth in FY24, with the volume of transactions rising from 4.7 billion to 6.4 billion, and the value of these transactions increasing from Rs403 trillion to Rs547 trillion—a growth of around 35% in both volume and value, the report stated adding that the share of digital payments by volume has surged from 76% in FY23 to 84% in FY24.
“This expansion is attributed to the growing number of digital channel users, facilitated by the convenience and variety of products offered through mobile banking apps, internet banking portals, and mobile wallets,” the SBP report said.
The report also highlights the pivotal role of digital payments made through mobile banking apps and internet banking portals, which collectively saw a 62% increase in transactions to 1,346 million, with the value of these transactions rising by 74% to Rs70 trillion.
The report said that mobile app banking users increased by 16%, internet banking users by 25%, while Branchless Banking (BB) mobile app wallet users grew by 2%, and e-wallet users by an impressive 85% during the period under review.
Similarly, mobile app-based wallets experienced substantial growth, with customers making 2,697 million payments through their BB mobile app wallets and 85 million through EMIs’ e-wallets, it added.
The report also encompassed the expansion of the POS machine network that has also contributed to the growth and stated that number of POS machines increased by 8.9% to 125,593 and the expansion was supporting card-based transactions at a growing number of retail outlets and stores.
As of FY23 end, there were 85,386 POS enabled merchants across the country. The network has now increased to 98,936 merchants as of FY24 end marking a growth of 16% in a single year, it stated.
E-commerce payments have also seen a remarkable shift, as 87% of digital payments for e-commerce now being initiated through bank accounts or digital wallets, the report revealed and added that a total of 309 million e-commerce payments were made during FY24, with a transaction value reaching Rs406 billion.
Transactions via RTGS saw a significant uptick, rising from 4.9 million to 5.8 million in volume and from Rs640.4 trillion to Rs1,043.1 trillion in value while a total of 496.1 million transactions amounting to Rs11.6 trillion were processed through Raast, Pakistan’s instant payment system. Last year in FY23, number of transactions stood at 147.2 million with value of Rs3.1 trillion.
