Dr Muhammad Saleem, member commercial of Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), has said that the use of mobile banking will help tap 20 percent unbanked people by 2020. Speaking at the 7th International Mobile Commerce Conference, here on Thursday, he said that the impact of mobile financial services by the year 2020 would be more beneficial for the country's economy.
"It is expected that it will increase GDP by three percent, create one million new jobs, create upto 600,000 new businesses and increase remittance services by 24 percent at international level," he added. The one-day conference was organised by Total Communications in collaboration with Bank Alfalah and support of State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) and PTA.
Saleem said that the use of mobile banking would help banks tap 20 percent unbanked people by 2020. He was of the view that the auction for 3G and 4G licenses would soon change the life style of the people of Pakistan, as the technology would introduce a lot of new services for the customers.
President and CEO of Bank Alfalah Atif Bajwa said that there was 200 percent growth in registration of branchless agents during the last one year, leading to an overall transactional growth of 63 percent from the previous year. "A major shift from electronic-commerce to mobile-commerce is in the offing and this is due to easy, short and paperless service," he added.
CEO of Tameer Microfinance Bank Nadeem Hussain said that the centre of gravity was changing from licensed branches of the central bank to unlicensed agents of mobile banking. He said that mobile phone banking would help bring Rs 2,000 billion into the banking system, which at present was lying out of the banking system and/or at homes. "We will install about 20,000 biometric machines at our outlets of easypaisa across the country by the end of this year. These machines will be connected with Nadra database and help opening of thousands of new bank accounts in the years to come," he added.
The conference also featured two panel discussions in which professionals from banking industry, telecom sector and other technology companies spoke at length. First discussion was on 'Developing the Eco System', which was moderated by Ali Abbas Sikandar, CEO Monet Pvt Limited. While, Atif Bajwa, President and CEO of Bank Alfalah; Nadeem Hussain, CEO of Tameer Microfinance Bank; Dr Muhammad Saleem, member commercial of PTA; Ghazanfar Azam, President Waseela Micro Finance Bank; Faisal Ejaz Kahn, CEO 1link and Arif Surhandi, President Ubank were the panellists. They discussed the ongoing development, challenges and future prospects of the industry in detail.
The second discussion was on 'OTC to Digital', which was moderated by Imdad Aslam, Regional Director, Digital Channels & Payments, Barclays Africa. The panellists were Qasif Shahid, EVP Head Remote Banking, MCB Bank; Faiq Sadiq, Head Payment Services, HBL; Mehreen Ahmed, Group Head, Bank Alfalah; Yahya Khan, VP Financial Services, Telenor Pakistan; Aniqa Afzal, Head Mobile Financial Services, Mobilink; Abrar, EVP head of Branchless Banking, UBL; Erum Azhar, Manager Financial Services Sector, IBM; Aqeel Hayat, Deputy Director MFS, Zong and Yousuf Ghous, Managing Director, Gemalto Pakistan.