With a significant growth of some 195 percent, mobile phone banking transactions crossed Rs 410 billion mark during the last fiscal year (FY18). According to Payment System Review (PSR) for the year 2017-18, issued by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) on Wednesday, Mobile Phone/App based banking is being offered by 21 Banks/MFBs to 3.4 million registered users at the end of June, 2018 and a significant transactions growth witnessed in FY18 as compared to the previous year.
The SBP said that in recent years, the payment and settlement systems of the country has been significantly changing on the account of the State Bank''s efforts to promote digital payments as alternative to cash. The review revealed that overall mobile banking processed 21.8 million transactions worth Rs 410 billion during FY18, showing a significant (YoY) growth of 195 percent and 190 percent in volume and value of transactions respectively.
During FY17, overall transactions were less than Rs 150 billion. Intra-bank and Inter-bank fund transfers were the main contributors in total mobile phone banking transactions. Intra-bank fund transfers contributed 5.8 million or 26.6 percent transactions by volume and Rs 186.2 billion or 45 percent by value.
Inter-bank fund transfers contributed 5.0 million or 23 percent transactions by volume and Rs 196.4 billion or 48 percent by value. Utility Bills Payments has the share of 10.1 million by volume and Rs 10.5 billion by value within overall mobile banking volume and value transactions respectively and insignificant residual share is contributed by miscellaneous payment using mobile phone app.
According to PSR the country''s core payment systems infrastructure remained operationally resilient and all the channels showed significant growth during the last fiscal year (FY18) compared to the previous year.
The transactions of large-value payment system, i.e. Pakistan Real Time Inter-bank Settlement Mechanism (PRISM) showed a significant growth of 54 percent and 29 percent in volume and value respectively during the last fiscal year (FY18) compared to previous year (FY17). Overall PRISM processed some 1.7 million transactions amounting to Rs 361.0 trillion during FY18.
In the total volume of PRISM''s transactions, the transactions with regards to the 3rd party customers'' transfers, has the highest share of 1.3 million transactions or 79 percent of the overall recorded transactions.
Whereas, in term of value of transactions, government securities settlement transactions have the highest share of 71 percent amounted to Rs 256 trillion in the overall transactions.
In addition, inter-bank fund transfers have some 18 percent share, 3rd party fund transfer transactions have value share of 7 percent and settlement ancillary payments have value share of 4 percent.
As on 30th June 2018, PRISM system has 43 Direct Participants which includes 30 Banks, 2 Specialized Banks, 2 MFBs, 8 DFIs and one non-bank which is Central Depository Company (CDC).
The e-Banking channels, i.e, real time online branches (RTOB), ATMs, e-Commerce, Internet, Mobile Phone and Call Centers/IVR Banking collectively processed 756.4 million transactions of value Rs 47.4 trillion during the last fiscal year. These transactions showed significant growth of 21 percent and 28 percent in both volume and value of transactions compared to previous year FY17.
During the year under review, Real Time Online Branches (RTOB) processed 165.7 million transactions of Rs 39.9 trillion.
These transactions depicted YoY growth of 15 percent and 28 percent in volume and value of transactions respectively compared to previous year.
The SBP said that new regulations such as Payment Systems Designation Framework, Guidelines for Clearing Operations, new rules for PRISM system, Electronic Fund Transfer Regulation and Guidelines for White Labels ATMs have been issued by the SBP in the current fiscal year to provide a level-playing field to all the stakeholders.