A report by Shaprak Company, the body in charge of supervising Iran’s domestic payment network, ranked business sectors in terms of retail transactions and the average value of transactions.
It topped the list of businesses in terms of the average value of payment transactions in the tenth month of the current Iranian fiscal year (ended Jan 22), with 7.01 million rials, way2pay website reported.
Legal consulting companies ranked after with average value of transactions at 6.58 million rials during the month. Companies providing transport services came in third with 6.32 million rials, followed by fuel and chemical products with 5.69 million rials, insurance companies 5.42 million rials, internet service providers and ITC companies 5.36 million rials, and ad firms 5.14 million rials.
The report put supermarkets and grocery stores at the top of the list with the highest number of transactions in the month, with 1.353 billion transactions. Bakeries came after with 333.8 million transactions followed by restaurants and fast foods at 207.2 million transactions, medical services and drug stores 186.5 million, fuel and chemical products 183.6 million and apparel stores 160 million transactions.
Figures show that supermarkets had the lowest average value of transactions. Agricultural services, tobacco and auto services were the other with lower average value of transactions.
Charities, legal consultants, cleaning services and advertisement firms had the lowest number of payment transactions.
Among the 31 provinces, Tehran was first in monthly transactions with 729.8 million transactions and an average value of 3.85 million rials. Ilam with 21.1 million transactions and Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad (with average value of transaction at 1.51 million rials) were at the bottom end.
Tehran, Khorasan Razavi, Fars, Isfahan, Khuzestan, Mazandaran, East Azerbaijan, West Azerbaijan, Alborz, and Gilan respectively had the highest number of transactions, while Tehran, Mazandaran, Kerman, West Azerbaijan, Hormozgan, Isfahan, East Azerbaijan, Bushehr, Kurdistan, and Yazd had the highest average transaction value.
An estimated 3.65 billion retail transactions were processed by the domestic e-payment network in the month.
$20 Billion in Transactions
Overall business via the major company was worth 8,449 trillion rials ($20.32 billion) – down 2.98% in volume but up 1.38% in value on the month before, the company said.
In volume terms, transactions jumped 18.11% on the same month last year when 3.09 billion transactions worth 6,267 trillion rials ($16.2 billion) were processed. The value was up 34.81% y/y.
Shaparak presents figures in real terms after adjusting for inflation. When adjusted for inflation, the real value of monthly transactions was down 2.83%.
However, the real value was down 10.91% from the same month last year factoring out annual inflation. The Statistical Center of Iran reported last week that the consumer price index in the month to January 22 climbed 4.33% on the month and 51.31% from the same period last year.
Regarding network services, 88.94% was for buying goods and services. Buying cellphone recharges and paying bills was second at 6.55% while 4.5% of the transactions were for checking bank a/c balances.
The number of instruments for processing payments was up 1.49% from the earlier month, reaching 10.32 million.
However, growth was noticeable in online payment gateways, up 14.35% from 669,343 to 765,391. Total POS terminals mostly used by retail outlets increased 0.59% to 9.43 million devices, but mobile payments slipped 0.27% to 124,937.
As is the norm, POS devices topped the list of instruments with the biggest market share at 31.38% followed by online payment gateways at 7.41% and mobile instruments 1.21%.
Processing more than 3.35 billion transactions worth 7,198 trillion rials ($17.7 billion), POS devices accounted for 92.46% of the total volume of transactions.
There were 1,670.57 instruments per 10,000 adults (above 18 years old) and POS terminals topped the list with 1,526.55 per 10,000 adults. Mobile instruments had the lowest penetration rate with 20.21 instruments for every 10,000 adults.
Tehran topped the list of provinces with the highest number of POS terminals with 1.616 million active devices in the sprawling metropolis – 0.41% higher on the earlier month.
This was followed by Khorasan Razavi with 718,849 devices and Fars 622,844. Ilam Province had the least POS devices at 66,498.
