According to the latest report published on Shaparak’s official website, when compared with the final month of the previous year to March 20, 2018, those numbers indicate a respective decline of 17.37% and 38.39%. The final month of last year had registered more than 1.75 billion transactions worth over 1.91 quadrillion rials ($45.41 billion).
This is, however, only natural since the final months of the year traditionally post higher transactions as people flock to make purchases in preparation for the Norouz holidays.
Seyyed Aboutaleb Najafi, chief executive of the Informatics Services Corporation—the entity established as an executive arm of the Central Bank of Iran for operating Iran’s comprehensive banking automation system, including Shaparak, announced in mid-April that 220 million Shaparak transactions were recorded only on the eve of the New Iranian Year, according to Financial Tribune.
The average per-day transaction for the rest of the year stood at 98 million, he had said at the time.
As Shaparak said in its latest report, compared with the first month of the previous fiscal year, when the number and total value of transactions stood at more than 1.11 billion and about 1 quadrillion rials ($23.77 billion) respectively, the number and value of transactions during the month signaled hikes of 29.85% and 17.08%.
Using data from the central bank, Shaparak also reports that the real value of transactions resulted after eliminating the effect of general inflation.
According to the payment settlement network, the real value of transactions contracted by 38.87% during the month when compared with the previous month. But when compared with the same month of the previous year, the real value of transactions actually grew by 8.47%.
Compared with the previous month, online means of payments indicated a 0.63% growth in the first month of this year whereas mobile instruments of receiving payments and point-of-sale devices registered a respective rise of 0.79% and 0.31% in terms of numbers. All-in-all, the instruments grew by 0.39% in terms of numbers.
During the first month, online means of payment held an 8.46% share of the market while mobile instruments’ share was equal to 11.18%. POS devices still held a predominant share at 80.36%.