SBP Payment Systems Review

According to a press release, issued by the State Bank of Pakistan, the bank has released the Payment Systems Review for the quarter ended July-September, 2013. The report aims to review recent developments in the area of large and retail value payment systems in Pakistan. During the quarter under review, Pakistan Real-time Interbank Settlement Mechanism (PRISM), the large value payment system of the country processed 131 thousand payments worth Rs. 30.6 trillion. This shows a decrease of 2.8% and 26.7% in Volume and Value respectively compared to the previous quarter. This decrease is mainly due to reduction in government securities settlement transactions by the central bank.

According to the press release, at retail level, the volume of e-banking transactions in Pakistan has grown considerably in recent years. During the quarter under review, overall volume of e-banking transactions grew by 29% compared to the same period last year and by 5.2% when compared to the previous quarter. Further, in the composition of total e-banking transactions; Volume, ATM has the highest share of 64.6% followed RTOB which has 22.8% share. The remaining portion of transactions, in terms of volume, is captured by POS, Internet, call centre and mobile banking. In terms of value RTOB has 87.6% share followed by ATM with 9.2% share.

According to SBP, the number of ATMs in the country is growing at an average of around 3.2% per quarter reaching 6,974 ATMs by the end of current quarter. As on 30th September 2013, for every 100,000 people, there are 3.8 ATMs in the country whereas during the same period, Rs. 591 billion were transacted using this channel. The number of transactions done via ATMs reached around 60 million in the first quarter (July to September) of 2013-14.

The number of Real Time Online Branches (RTOB) is 10,135 which accounts for 95% of the total bank branches in the country; around 21 million transactions amounting Rs. 5.6 trillion were performed via this channel during the first quarter (July-September) of 2013-14. As on 30th September 2013, there are around 18.5 Point of Sale machines for every 100,000 people in the country.
The fastest growing payment channel in the country is mobile banking where the number of transactions grew by 70% and the value transacted grew by 236% compared with the same period of last year. Presently there are around 1.4 million registered users of mobile banking in the country.

Tags: Banks, Economics, Trade, Business, Credit, Loans

Related