The recent report of State Bank of Pakistan has told an enormous increase in number of Mobile account holders in Pakistan. There might by many factors, influencing the rate but biometric verification of SIM’s have played pivotal role in doing it so.
Branchless banking account holders in Pakistan Jan-March 2015
As the report of first-Quarter year tells that number of mobile accounts have rose up to 7.54 million during Jan-March 2015, and previously was 5.41 million in Oct-Dec 2014 report. In first quarter of 2015, 39% of growth is observed in number of mobile account holders as compare to Dec 2014.
SBP’s perspective
“Opening accounts without usage will not serve the national strategic objective of financial inclusion,”
Key Indicators
Volume of Transaction and Value of Transaction
Volume of Transaction has experienced a slight increase of 1%, although value of transaction has declined 4.8 %, marking Rs 354 billion for the quarter. Here is how value of transaction suffered due to the following declines:
Government-to-person payments (-75%)
Loan disbursements (-98%)
Top-ups (-47%)
If we look at the Volume of Transaction Oct-Dec 2014, it was around 71.8 million moved up to 72.5 million after making a minor increase of 1 %.
BB transactions
BB transactions re further divided into:
- Customer-oriented transaction
- Agent-oriented transaction
Customer-oriented transaction comprises of mobile wallets and over-the-counter transactions and both these contributed 94% in volume and 65% in value of the total BB transactions.
Previously, OTC to m-wallet ratio in terms of volume of transactions was 86:14 and in this quarter it lies at 88:12.
Mostly customers open their account just to avail the incentives and offers from the operators and after getting it they didn’t carry on with their accounts.
Here is the summary of Active-to-Total BB accounts:
The ratio have fell to 20% in Jan-March 2015 and previously it was 43% in Oct-Dec 2014.
