State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) on Thursday released its Quarterly Payment System Review for the first quarter of the fiscal year 2020-21, which shows strong growth in the pace of digital financial transactions in the country.
According to the report, there has been a big increase in customers who have started using digital financial transactions in Pakistan. 253.7 million e-Banking transactions were conducted by the customers, worth Rs 19 trillion.
E-Banking transactions include ATM transactions, mobile phone banking transactions, Internet Banking transactions, E-Commerce, POS transactions, call center transactions, and Real-Time Online Branches transactions.
Although Real-time Online Branches has the major share in E-Banking transactions that comes to 80% of the total yet the other type of transactions are more than 83% of e-Banking transactions as far as the volume is concerned.
During this period, the trend was the increase in internet banking and mobile phone transaction which is an encouraging aptitude.
During the first quarter of the fiscal year 2020-21, SBP reports the total increase in digital transactions are 77% and 47% in volume and value as compared to the same period of the previous fiscal year.
The number of registered mobile phone banking users is 8.9 million which shows an increase of 41% as compared to the same period of the previous year.
The number of users of internet banking is 4.3 million which shows an increase of 26% as compared to the internet users of previous years during the same quarter.
The mobile banking transactions increased to the extent of 36.4%, worth Rs 908.7 billion, showing an increase of 139% by volume and 211% by value if it is compared to the same quarter of the previous year.
Internet banking transactions increase to 18.9 million, worth Rs 1.1 trillion as compared to the same quarter of previous years.
The POS transactions were 16.8 million, worth Rs 92.3 billion. This shows an increase of 47% by volume and 49% by value if it is compared to the same period of the previous year.
Promoting digital financial transactions is one of the important targets of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP).
From the data, mentioned above, it seems that the central bank of the country has been successful in increasing the trend of digital transactions.
This is a fact that the emergence of Coronavirus is among the important reasons why people are opting for e-transactions that is driving the digital economy.
