Internet banking services on the rise

By Yasir Ameen Feb 4th, 2012 ( 2 Comments )

Karachi: The use of internet banking has remarkably increased in the country with surging number of customers opted for hassle-free and rapid mode of money transactions through their banks, depicting 89 per increase in the service utility with volume of money grew by 112 percent in first quarter of financial year 2011-12.

The State Bank of Pakistan’s “Payment Systems Review” stated that Rs 84.85 billion were transferred through internet banking in Pakistan in Jul-Sep 2011, with 1.6 million number of transactions.

Similarly, the mobile-banking services were also seen significant growth in utility by the customers, which shows the increasing reliability of the customers on the advanced payment system with confidence and preference.

According to the statistics, the money transferred through mobile-banking services were recorded at Rs 4.27 billion against the transactions of 1.06 million through services of different banks.

During the quarter under review, e-banking transactions settled at levels slightly lower than those in the previous quarter mainly as a reflection of overall economic activity in the country.

The volume and value of overall e-banking transactions in the country during the quarter under review was recorded at 63.7 million and Rs.6.15 trillion respectively, showing a decrease of 3.9 percent in the volume and 1.34 percent in value as compared to the previous quarter.

The number of ATMs increased to 5,318 across the country with addition of 118 units in July-September 2011 in the market

A total of 7,885 bank branches are now offering RTOB out of total 9,651 bank branches in the country whereas 469 more bank branches were upgraded/ added to Real-Time Online Branches (RTOBs)

ATM transactions showed 5.46 percent decrease in number of transactions and 0.04 percent decrease in value which resulted in an average value of Rs9,222 per ATM transaction.

At this level, the share of ATM transactions in total e-banking transactions in terms of volume and value worked out to 58.2 percent and 5.6 percent respectively.

The number of plastic cards also increased by 3.65 percent compared to the numbers recorded in the previous quarter. In total, there were 14.5 million plastic cards in circulation across the country by the end of the quarter till September 2011.