Iran Digital Payments Transactions Grow 26%

EghtesadOnline: An estimated 2.35 billion transactions worth 2,617 trillion rials ($23.05 billion) were processed by Iran's domestic payment network, Shaparak, during the fiscal month to August 22.

News ID: ۷۴۸۳۹۹

11 September 2019

The latest monthly report published on Shaparak's website shows a year-on-year growth of 26.79% and 10.64% in volume and value respectively.

The volume grew by 0.62% while value fell 1.11% compared to a month earlier when more than 2.34 billion transactions worth 2,646 trillion rials ($23.31 billion) were processed, Financial Tribune reported.

Annual surge in the value of transactions was attributed mainly to galloping inflation. "A year-on-year comparison of the transactions’ value, after factoring out point-to-point inflation, shows 18.12% decline."

Shaparak listed growth in the number of payment gateways, and public tendency towards electronic payment tools, rather than paying cash, as the other key factors in digital payment.

The network failed to process 198.3 million or 7.7% of the total transactions during the period. User errors were the main reason for the failed payment transactions and accounted for 177.4 million or 89% of all unsuccessful transactions.

Problems with card issuers, payment gateway providers and the networks were other causes of failure in the payment process.

Purpose of Transactions

Shaparak data shows that almost 83.66% of the transactions were for “the purchase of goods and services", which showed 2.67% growth compared to the same period last year.

"Paying bills" and "checking account balance" were next respectively, accounting for 11.66%, and 4.68 % of the transactions. In volume terms, transactions for paying bills fell 0.93% on a YOY basis.

In value terms, transactions for purchasing goods and services had a 97.3% share.

Likewise, the total value of transactions grew by 2.77% compared to the same time last year.

Growth in POS Terminals

Total number of POS terminals increased 1.47% during the one-month period to reach 7.46 million. More than 88% of total transactions were processed via POS terminals, the company said.

Higher number of POS devices is attributed largely to their wider spread compared to other devices and its use without the need for supplementary devices such as PC or cellphone, which may not always be available.

Likewise, POS devices registered the highest number of transactions with the total reaching 2.07 billion.

As per the report, the number of online payment gateways rose 1.01% compared to the earlier month and had a market share of 10.04%.

Online payment gateways registered the lowest number of processed transactions at 136.6 million.

Mobile gateways registered 1.64% rise in the said period. Mobile gateways accounted for 12.33% the total payment tools by the end of the fifth month of the Iranian fiscal year.

Shaparak's said sthe penetration rate of payment tools shows that there were 1,635 tools per 10,000 adults (above 18 years old) during the one-month period.

POS devices had the highest and online gateways the lowest penetration rates, with 1,269 and 164 tools per 10,000 adults, respectively.

Tehran Province topped the list with the highest number of payment tools. During the period, there were 1.58 million active POS devices in the metropolis, followed by Khorasan Razavi and Isfahan provinces, with 579,285 and 533,229 devices in operation, respectively.

The lowest number of POS devices was in Ilam Province with 55,033 POS machines.

PSPs

The report also took stock of the performance of payment service providers. Beh Pardakht Mellat, Bank Mellat-affiliated PSP firm, held the lion's share both in volume and value of processed transactions, accounting for 21.77% and 23.97%of all transactions, respectively.

This was followed by Saman Electronic Payment, a Bank Saman-affiliate, which accounted for 18.77% of the total transactions.

Beh Pardakht Mellat accounted for 23.79% of all transactions conducted by POS terminals. Saman Electronic Payment ranked first in terms of volume of mobile transactions, with 28.92% share.

Asan Pardakht Persian holds the lion's share of volume of transactions processed thorough online payment gateways, accounting for 37.26% of the total.