An estimated 3.701 billion retail transactions were processed by the domestic electronic payment network, known as Shaparak, in the third month of the calendar year to June 20.
They were worth 7,251 trillion rials ($22.65 billion) – up 4.24% in volume and 8.6% in value on the month before, the company in charge of supervising and maintaining the network said on its website.
Collective value of transactions jumped 32.19% on the same month last year when 3.3 billion transactions worth 5,572 trillion rials ($17.41 billion) were processed. In volume terms it was 11.8% higher y/y.
Shaparak presents figures in real value terms to adjust for inflation. However, when adjusted for inflation, the real value of transactions was down 3.23% on a monthly basis.
The real value was also 13.95% lower from the same month last year when factoring out annual inflation. As per data from the Statistical Center of Iran, the consumer price index in the month to June 20 grew by 12.22% on a monthly basis and 52.47% compared to the same period last year.
In terms of services offered by the network in the month under review, 88.85% of the transactions were for buying goods and services. Buying cellphone recharges and paying bills was second at 6.69% of the services while 4.46% of the transactions were for checking bank account balances.
The nationwide network failed to process 323.2 million transactions in the month – up 4.56% from the second month of the year. As per the report, users were responsible for 86.1% of the failed transactions, up 6.9%. Issuer banks were the cause of nearly 11.78% of the rejected transactions.
Shaparak offers services via internet, cellphone and point of sale (POS) devices.
The number of instruments for processing payments showed 0.94% decrease over the earlier month, reaching 9.07 million.
However, growth was noticeable in online payment gateways, which increased 3.29% from 390,149 to 402,989. The total number of POS terminals, mostly used in retail business, declined 1% to 8.5 million devices, and the number of mobile payments dropped 7.7% to 144,300.
Decline in the number of payment gateways could be attributed to implementation of stringent measures by the Iran National Tax Administration obliging owners of payment gateways to connect their devices to INTA's database or stop using them.
As is usually the case, POS devices topped the list of instruments with the biggest market share at 93.97%. This was followed by online payment gateways at 4.44% and mobile instruments 1.59%.
Processing more than 3.41 billion transactions worth 6,247 trillion rials ($19.52 billion), POS devices accounted for 92.29% of the total volume of transactions.
Online gateways were second at 4.82% of the total number of transactions followed by mobile instruments at 2.89%.
Online gateways also recorded the highest average value of transactions during the said period – 5.54 million rials.
Based on the report, there were 1,468 instruments per 10,000 adults (above 18 years old) and POS terminals topped the list with 1,379 instruments per 10,000 adults.
Mobile instruments had the lowest penetration rate with 23.35 instruments per 10,000 adults.
Tehran topped the list of provinces with the highest number of POS terminals. There were 1.52 million active POS devices in the sprawling metropolis, which was 2.84% lower on the earlier month.
This was followed by Khorasan Razavi with 647,025 and Isfahan 561,560 active devices. Ilam Province had the least POS devices at 59,645.
Almost one-third of the transactions made via POS terminals were each worth 50,001 to 250,000 rials. More than 52% of the total POS transactions were above 250,000 rials.
