Financial experts at a conference on Wednesday emphasised on creating awareness among the people about branchless and mobile banking to ensure inclusion of maximum population into financial system.
Eighty five per cent of the country’s population stands excluded from the financial services as only 7 per cent people know about mobile accounts and that how these work, said Tameer Micro Finance Bank Limited President Nadeem Hussain, as a main speaker, at the conference on retail banking in Pakistan.
Nadeem Hussain, appreciating the support extended by State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) to the retail banking, noted that further steps including financial regulations were required from the government and SBP to provide enabling environment for the fast growth of branchless and mobile banking and their sustainability.
At present, he said, the banking system was much loaded and this should be made more attractive to encourage the Overseas Pakistani workers remitting their earnings to their families here.
The National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) can play a key role in promoting mobile banking by quick and least charged verification of a person interested to open a mobile banking account. The biometrics verification system should be without any paper work for boosting mobile accounts.
“Within one minute a mobile account should be open and made operative. This should be as easiest as sending a SMS,” the prominent banker urged.
Besides covering various categories of payments like pensions and salary amounts, a mobile account should allow more transactions per day. Mobile banking focus more on social banking than commercial banking, he said.
He said total 4.7 million mobile accounts did operate in the country and there was a dire need for rapid increase in this number.
The Tameer Bank’s chief was optimistic that within next three years, Pakistan will be one of the largest countries having branchless banking with 35 million minimum expected mobile accounts. The number of merchants for easypaisa should increase to more than 100,000 and that the merchants should also cut their discount rates.
SBP Executive Director Sammar Hussain spoke for financial inclusion, promoting branchless banking and Islamic banking and increasing remittances especially those from the Overseas Pakistanis.
He highlighted the policies and efforts made by the State Bank of Pakistan as the regulator of financial sector of the country at different levels for promoting financial inclusion and branchless banking. The strategy on financial inclusion is also being developed.
The SBP and the government is giving top priority to the financial inclusion, he said, adding that monetary policy would work properly only if there was a good level of financial inclusion in the country.
About Islamic banking, he said, it had only 10 per cent share in the total banking system. However, the government and the SBP were seriously pursuing the agenda of converting conventional banking into the Islamic one.