Daily Times

KARACHI: Banking transactions through cell phones has become a popular mode of payment in Pakistan as the introduction of 3G/4G has pushed mobile banking transactions up by 5 % to Rs 26 billion in second quarter of fiscal year 2015-16 (FY16).

According to the Payment Systems statistics report released by State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) on Friday, Pakistani banking consumers made Rs 25.9 billion worth of banking transactions in second quarter (January-March) of FY16, registering 4.80% growth over mobile transaction of Rs 24.7 billion in first quarter of this fiscal.

Similarly, E-banking transactions also witnessed significant growth by 11.32% in second quarter as Rs 9.45 trillion worth of transaction have been made in first three months of this year by the banking consumers as compared to Rs 8.50 trillion in last quarter of 2015. Payment through mobile increased by 2.25% to Rs 733 million against Rs 717 million in previous quarter, similarly account-to-account fund transfer through mobile increased by 5.46% and 3rd party A/c to A/c funds transfer also went up by 0.8%.

However, utility bills payments through mobile phones witnessed a decline of 17.57 % in second quarter of this fiscal.

Pakistan Realtime Interbank Settlement Mechanism (PRISM) transactions show an increase of 5 percent in volume and 19 percent in value during the second quarter of FY16, PRISM settled 225,598 transactions of value Rs 64.1 trillion, showing an increase of 5% and 19% in volume and value respectively compared to first quarter of FY16. The major share in increase of number of PRISM transactions was contributed by Interbank Funds Transfer, which increased by 5.29% while increase in value of PRISM transactions was contributed by securities settlement which increased by 18%.

In second quarter of FY16, Automated Teller Machine (ATM) transactions showed a decrease of 2.41% in volume and 3.51% in value as compared to last quarter of FY16. The volume of Real Time Online Banking (RTOB) transactions rose from 29.5 million to 32.7 million whereas the value increased by 13.5% i.e. Rs 7.2 trillion to Rs 8.2 trillion caused by increase in real time cash withdrawals and deposits and inclusion of Microfinance Banks (MFBs) data in payment system statistics. Non-financial transactions declined by 4.34%.

During the second quarter of current fiscal year, the network of ATMs continued to grow reaching from 10,099 to 10,736. Further, 5,689 POS machines were added to the network, showing a growth of 12.82% as compared to first quarter of FY16. The number of cards issued by banks has also increased by 16.27%, reaching the total of 33 million by the end of the quarter under review. This increase is mainly caused by addition of MFBs issued 3.7 million ATMs only cards in payment system statistics in this quarter. During the current quarter, registered users of Internet, mobile and call centre banking showed a growth of 3.94%, reaching to 22 million at the end of second quarter of FY16.