1.75 Billion Shaparak Transactions in One Month

EghtesadOnline: More than 1.75 billion transactions worth more than 1.91 quadrillion rials ($45.47 billion) were registered by Shaparak, Iran’s payment settlement network, in the final month of the previous fiscal year that ended on March 20.

News ID: ۷۸۲۳۸۲

21 April 2018

The latest report disclosed by the Central Bank of Iran-affiliated entity on its website shows that the number and value of transactions registered a respective increase of 13.39% and 18.74% respectively when compared with the previous month. Compared with the same month of previous year, the number of transactions showed an increase of 25.83% while the value of transactions indicated a 19.11% hike.

While a portion of the rise in the rial value of transactions was due to inflation, announced at 9.6% for the whole of last year by CBI, other reasons behind the growth were identified by Shaparak as a steady rise in the number of payment receiving instruments, a rise in the number of cardholders and a growing tendency toward employing various methods of payment as opposed to using physical money.

Eliminating the effect of inflation, the rial value of Shaparak transactions grew by 17.40% and 9.97% during the final month of last year compared with the previous month and the same month of the year before respectively, Financial Tribune reported.

As Seyyed Aboutaleb Najafi, CEO of Informatics Services Corporation—the entity overseeing Iran’s interbank and payment networks, announced on Monday, Shaparak recorded a total of 18 billion transactions last year, with the last day of the year setting a record with 110 million transactions.

According to the monthly Shaparak report, all instruments for receiving payments, namely POS devices in shops, Internet and mobile instruments, posted monthly growths and brought the total growth of instruments to 2.37%.

In the final month of last year, the market share of these instruments remained unchanged with POS devices grabbing an 80.43% share and mobile and Internet instruments holding a respective share of 11.14% and 8.44%.

In terms of transactions, POS devices boasted a dominating 89.41% share while mobile and Internet instruments had respective shares of 6.67% and 3.93%.

As the number of transactions grew during the final month of last year, the number of errors also increased noticeably. The total number of successful transactions rose by 13.39%, but unsuccessful transactions jumped by 25.60%.

User errors still accounted for a majority of unsuccessful transactions at 74.07%, but errors on the sending end–the bank sending the transaction request or the Shetab interbank system–grabbed a 23.19% share to signify a 196.39% monthly surge.

Errors on the receiving end–the switch of the payment services provider–also registered a 139.37% monthly increase, but had an overall share of 1.88%.