Branchless Banking Has Overtaken Commercial Banks: SBP

Yesterday on Thursday, the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) advised conventional banks to re-design their strategy if they want to survive in the future, since they’re being challenged by the system of branchless banking.

Syed Irfan Ali, Executive Director of SBP said  that “the conventional banks need to re-make their future strategy very quickly” speaking at the second Pakistan Payment Summit, 2016, jointly organized by Total Communications, State Bank of Pakistan and 1Link.

He said that the number of total physical branches is going to be crossing 15,000 this year, but how long are they really going to be there?

“In comparison with them, the number of branchless banking agents have crossed 400,000 mark. Eight years ago, it seemed to be a miracle to have 50,000 agents in the system.”

According to the central bank, there are 35 commercial banks, including 7-8 Islamic banks. 9 banks in collaboration with mobile phone service providing firms are offering branchless banking services in Pakistan.

Syed Irfan Ali added more to the topic by saying that there are 11,000 ATMs present in this country today, and as the need of ATMs is now 4 times higher, we are going to need 40,000 ATMs in the country.

The SBP has challenged itself to provide access of banking services to 50% of the adult population in the country by 2020. The system of digital payment is helping quite a lot for the financial inclusion he said.

He further added “The SBP remains in constant collaboration with Pakistan Telecommunication Authority to support growth in digital payment system. It also remains in touch with ministries of commerce, finance and IT in this regard.”

According to Qasif Shahid, Founder and CEO-FinJa, many developed countries have transformed from cash heavy societies to cashless societies. Some of them include Norway, Sweden, Scandinavia and Australia.

He said that Pakistan is also following up on this matter and is soon going to convert from cash heavy to cashless as well later through the help of digital payment systems.

Via BusinessRecorder


  • Plus the next challenge for branch less banking is to issue cards powered by visa or mastercard plus contract with banks so that money can easily be transferred to branch less bank cards and then can be used to pay online.


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