2.1 million new accounts were opened in the branchless banking sector which increased the total amount to 15.2 million from October to December 2015 on Tuesday according to SBP.
However the transaction values have decreased in comparison to the previous term according to the central banks reports which said that the decline was about 8.4 pc (from Rs 5,219 to Rs 4,784) from July to Sep 2015. The BB transactions also saw 7.6 pc decline as they reached from Rs 526.4 billion to Rs 486 billion this year. Therefore the average size came to Rs 4,782 that reflected the BB channel’s low income facilitation to meet the needs in the financial sector though new innovation and ideas to increase it are being planned too.
The total number of transactions came up by 0.8 pc from 100.86 million to 101.63 million this year where BB was used for cash deposits, withdrawals, top ups, transfers, bill payments, and payments from government to person as well where it has become the main source for government welfare payments and facilitated government to person payments from Oct to Dec last year between Rs 18.71 million to 4.71 million.
Talking about government to person payments, the Benazir Income Support tops it all going from 3.7 million to 15.4 million followed by Internally Displaced People (IDP)that came from 113,598 to Rs 2.6 billion while Rs 337 million were reached from 267,454 beneficiaries by the World Food Program.
The active number of total BB accounts also increased from last year’s 39 pc to this year’s 41 pc while it was the highest (46 pc) in June 2014 after being historically low at 20 pc in March 2015 previously. It has been set as a target by the National Financial Inclusion Strategy that from the current 16 pc in 2015 at least 50 pc of the adult population has a transactional account by 2020 as 10.4 million mobile wallets have been projected till December 2015 where about 47 pc have been achieved above it.
