Pakistan wants more branchless banking

There exists a large ‘financially-excluded’ market in Pakistan.

State Bank of Pakistan Governor Yaseen Anwar based this observation on numbers, which revealed that there are 120 million mobile phone subscribers and 32 million banking accounts, whereas the number of borrowers is only 5.7 million.

Mr Anwar urged banks and mobile network operators to promote branchless banking for the benefit of the un-banked and underserved people of the country.

He said that the last five years average shows that 36 percent of the transactions were routed through electronic channels depicting a 23 percent average yearly growth as compared to two percent average growth in paper based transactions.
“Bringing this un-served market into the formal financial system is our key objective as we believe that this would enrich socio-economic development of our country,” he said.

He pointed out that brick and mortar retail network of the entire financial industry of Pakistan stands at 11,000 outlets after 65 years while branchless banking retail agents’ network has grown beyond 32,000 agents in a short span of three years.

With almost 1.8 million mobile banking accounts, the branchless banking customers conducted almost 32 million transactions worth Rs140 billion during the quarter ending September 2012, he said, adding that average size of each transaction is Rs4065 which shows that technology is helping ‘financial access’ of the un-banked population of the country.

Mr Anwar said that 90 percent of total bank branches are currently processing real-time online banking services across the country.

“One million internet banking users, 1.8 million mobile phone banking users, and more than 10 million call centre users are enjoying virtual banking,” he added.

Stressing the need for modernising and expanding the payments system infrastructure segments, Mr Anwar said that a proposal is under consideration at SBP for preparation of Payment Systems Strategic Road Map for the next five years.

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