Money Transfer: Internet and Mobile-Banking Share Remains Thin

Yasir Ameen

Despite of the fact, the financial transactions through internet-banking and mobile-banking have witnessed significant growth in terms of volume and value in the past few years, the share of these two modes of payment are still standing at 2 and 1 percent in overall electronic-banking system.

The Payment System Review released by State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) on Tuesday, said the share of internet-banking and mobile-banking constitute merely 3 percent of the overall transactions volume of electronic banking system that recorded 70.9 million in the third quarter of financial year 2011-12.

According to the review, the volume of internet-banking were recorded growth of 68 to stand at 1.85 million against the transaction value of Rs 95.08 billion with 90 percent growth in the third quarter of FY12 compared with corresponding period of previous financial year.

Mobile-banking, on the other hand, witnessed decline in transaction volume by 30 to 0.620 million in the third quarter of FY12 against the transaction value of 2.73 billion with 53 percent growth.

The transactions volume and value carried out under mobile-banking is based on transfer of funds, utility bills payment, mobile uploads and etc using services of cellular phone and banks through mobile phone handsets. The category payment is different from the branchless banking through made through retail outlets or point of sale by bank or cellular operator.

The efforts of commercials banks through advertisement, prizes and awareness have not been successful so far as most of the customers do prefer ATMs, or RTOB (Real Time Online Branches) for funds transfer. Because there is a need to educate customer for using the most advance payments modes that are not only done rapidly but conserve time and resources of the bank and customers as well.

Overall, the transactions are mostly carried out mainly from ATM, which constitutes 60 percent share of the e-banking system as the total number of ATMs in the country to 5,612 by March 2012 across the country.

The volume and value of overall e-banking transactions in the country surged by 5.9 and 6.47 percent to reach at 70.9 million and Rs. 6,871 billion respectively during the third quarter of the current fiscal year 2011-12 (FY12) compared to the preceding quarter, says SBP’s review.