In its initial stages, the mobile banking in Pakistan has gained tremendous popularity among customers with rapid pace as colossal amount of Rs 10 billion was transacted through a single cellular operator in a year.
Telenor Pakistan, the subsidiary of Norwegian telecom giant, with its various m-banking services recorded over six million transaction carried under its brand “EasyPaisa” by the end of first year.
Information obtained from the cellular phone company sources revealed the number of carried transactions has been increasing over a period of time that has reached one million in a single month with transacted amount crossed Rs 2 billion benchmark.$home$
Telenor official told Daily Times the number of customers is increasing frequently who like to use m-banking for the payments of utility bills and domestic money transfer services.
EasyPaisa received decent responses from all segments of society but it are mostly used in urban cities of the country, however, customers in rural areas have been growing with the passage of time, they added.
Roar Bjærum, VP Financial Services, Telenor Pakistan, said the m-banking services are charged adequately in terms of its instant and secure and convenient transactions in maximum urban and rural areas of the country, causing handsome growth in number of customers.
There is also a significant price saving on money transfer from mobile accounts, which has been attracting a lot of customers to be holder of mobile accounts. On the other hand, Telenor SIM holders can register for easypaisa accounts and send and receive money from their own mobile phones, without having to go to an easypaisa shop, he added.
Besides utility bills’ payment and money transfer domestically, the m-banking services also started off remittances transaction service recently throughout the world
It has also collaborated with charity organisations for donation transfer via easypaisa to Pakistan Red Crescent Society, Shaukat Khanum Memorial Trust Hospital, and SOS Children’s Villages of Pakistan).
Easypaisa is the branchless banking solution resulted in partnership Tameer Microfinance Bank and Telenor Pakistan developing in the form of bank-led model.
VP Telenor said, “the m-banking continues to help bring much needed financial services to the unbanked across Pakistan with a diverse range of products on offer. I see strong prospects of expanding it further in the future.”
The mobile banking was first introduced by Mobilink in 2008 in telecom sector. Besides, there are many banks that started off their m-banking services. The prevailing model is termed as m-banking in a country, which has been planned to develop as teleco-led model.
Pakistan Telecommunic-ation Authority (PTA) and State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) have been jointly working exclusively to finalise the rules and regulation of m-banking models for banks and telecom operators.
The telecom regulator has suggested that m-banking should be liberalised for cellular phone operators and banks, that is, any operator may engage with more than one bank without any restriction. However, the banking regulators tend to stick to one-bank and one-cellular phone policy.
The technical sessions and studies have been underway on different prospects of m-banking. The m-banking regulations are likely to be notified by banking and telecom authorities jointly in the current fiscal year.