Average daily branchless banking transactions in Pakistan are estimated to cross one million mark with-in this year, said State Bank of Pakistan in its quarterly review for branchless banking sector.
State bank, in its Jan-March 2014 quarterly review, said that branchless banking transactions during the quarter stood at 68.5 million transactions that were worth Rs. 278.3 billion, showing 27% growth in volume, and 19% growth in value of transactions over the same duration past year.
In comparison, growth in volume and value of transactions were only 4% and 5% respectively in the last quarter.
State bank said that Waseela, Timepey and, U-paisa showed the highest growth in volume of transactions during the quarter. Yet, in terms of market shares by volume, Easypaisa remained the leader capturing 55% share, followed by Omni which seized 24% share. Whereas the share of other players collectively accounted for 21% of total volume of transactions during the quarter.
State bank said that on average, number of daily transactions crossed 760,000. Considering the growth rate, the review said, the market will easily cross 1 million daily transactions during this year.
The significant increase in transactions was characterized by bills payments, domestic remittances, and Government to Person (G2P) payments.
Central bank, in its report, revealed that Over the Counter (OTC) transactions maintained 80% share in overall transactional volume while the share of m-wallet transactions stood at 14%.
BB accounts reached 3.83 million by the end of March 2014, showing an increase of 10% over the last quarter. Furthermore, deposits in BB accounts surged to Rs 4.9 billion mainly owing to the deposits in to G2P accounts during the quarter. However, there were 1.96 million inactive accounts by the end of quarter, despite the fact that only less than 1% of 2.1 million G2P accounts showed dormancy.
The agent network grew by 19% reaching 148,324 in number. The agent network is significantly powered by the players’ preference to acquire shared agents.
Check more details in below graphs (extracted from SBP report):
Number and Value of Transactions
Type of BB Transactions
It could speed up even more if the banks provide Credit Card easily. Moreover, we need our own payment gateway service like PayPal.
We already have China UnionPay Credit Card & Debit Card.