ISLAMABAD:The number of merchant Point of Sale (POS) machines in the country increased by 10% during first quarter (Jul-Sept) of current fiscal year to 79,134 units compared to the last quarter of FY21.
According to the quarterly “Payment System Review” released by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), the these machines processed 28.1 million card-based transactions at merchant locations amounting to almost Rs 134.9 billion which showed QoQ increase of 16.1% by volume and 10.6% by value.
The report added that during the first quarter of FY21 a total of 21.3 million transactions valuing Rs 98 billion were executed while in the second quarter the volume of transactions and value rose to 25.5 million and Rs 123.7 billion respectively.
Similarly the volume of transaction and value further rose to 27.3 million and Rs 128.8 billion in third quarter of FY21. In the last quarter of previous fiscal year, the volume of transactions and value edged down to 26.7 million and Rs 126.2 billion while it jumped to 34.1 million and Rs 150.7 billion respectively in first quarter of the current fiscal year, the report added.
Similarly, the report added that volume of e-commerce transactions also surged by 169 percent in first quarter of current fiscal year compared to same period (Jul-Sep) of the year 2020-21. The value of transactions also increased by 94.2 percent during the period under review to Rs 46.8 billion from Rs 24.1 billion in July-September (2020-21).
During the period under review, the number of transactions executed through debit card increased from 3.9 million valuing Rs 11.1 billion to 12.3 million in Q1FY22 valuing Rs 25.2 billion. The number of transactions executed through credit cards rose from 2.2 million amounting to Rs 12.9 billion to 4.1 million amounting to Rs 21.4 billion inf Q1FY22.