SBP says digital transactions surged 24pc in second quarter of FY-21

The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has on Thursday released a Quarterly Payment System Review (QPSR) report for the second quarter of the fiscal year 2020-21 noting 296.7 million e-Banking transactions have taken place amounting to Rs21.4 trillion, ARY News reported.

During the second quarter, spanning from October to December 2020 registered a growth of 24 per cent by volume and 22 pc by value when compared with the same period last year, the SBP press release read.

According to the central bank, most of the uptake in e-banking transactions were seen in internet and mobile banking.

The mobile banking transaction volume in this period reached 44 million, which is a 147 pc jump compared to 17.8 million transactions last year’s fy.

The volume this year’s second quarter translates to Rs1.12 trillion which means 192 pc surge valuing at Rs382.5 billion in the same quarter, last year.

The number of registered mobile phone banking users reached 9.4 million registering an increase of 5%. Similarly, 22 million internet banking transactions valuing Rs1.3 trillion were recorded during this period compared to Rs1.1 trillion in the previous quarter.

The press statement attributed the growth to the bank’s measures to incentivize the installation of Point of Sale machines.

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The PoS facilitated digital payments through debit or credit cards and the number of such machines has shown a notable growth of 18% during Q2FY21, reaching 62,480 installations throughout the country.

On these POS machines, 23 million transactions amounting to Rs115 billion were processed during this period, said SBP.

The central money regulator said the growth shows the positive impact of the market-conducive policies adapted by SBP, “particularly targeted towards increasing the payment acceptance infrastructure in Pakistan”.