With the addition of EMIs in Pakistan’s payments ecosystem, people have started to adopt digital instruments for payments.
Electronic Money Institutions (EMIs), are increasingly expanding their footprints across countries, offering various financial products and services. This shows a visible growth of their consumer base and assets, including over 1 million accounts and payment cards by the end of 2022.
According to the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), the number of accounts maintained by EMIs increased to 1.19 million by end of December 2022 as compared to 0.7 million stood by end of the previous quarter of the outgoing year.
Over Rs. 36 million were transacted by the operational EMIs as per the Payment System Review issued by the SBP.
There are 10 EMIs listed by the central bank as licenses of different categories. Among these, merely four operators have been allowed to roll out different services to this date including NayaPay Pvt, Finja Pvt. Ltd, CMPECC Ltd., and SadaTech.
These operators are providing various financial services and products e- money wallets for consumers, e-money wallets for merchants, and payment gateways for consumers and merchants. The EMIs attract customers through the easiest way of getting services with minimum charges, hence customers include in its services mainly for the purpose of transaction of money.
Besides these EMIs, three operators have been granted pilot approvals as well with limited access to the market for testing their services. Three EMIs were given in-principle licenses and one license of an operator was revoked.
Since the past few quarters, an increasing trend in the shift towards is observed. With the addition of EMIs in Pakistan’s payments ecosystem, people have started to adopt digital instruments for payments.
EMIs in Pakistan issued 1.8 million payment cards to their customers by end of December 2022, which is 3.8% of the overall payment cards issued by various banks and financial institutions.
As of December 2022, the payment cards issued in Pakistan stood at 46.5 million of which, 44.7 million are issued by Banks/ MFBs while 1.8 million payment cards are issued by EMIs.
