Performance reports of payment service providers show three major companies handled nearly 57% of the total e-transactions in the fiscal year to March 2021.
Shaparak, a company affiliated with the Central Bank of Iran and in charge of supervising Iran's domestic payment network, processed more than 33.16 billion e-payments worth 54,571 trillion rials ($228.8 billion) in the year, 21.27% of which was handled by Beh Pardakht Mellat company.
Saman Electronic Payment and Parsian Electronic Commerce Company were next with 19.34% and 17.6%, respectively. PECCO managed to expand its market share by 2.51% during the period.
Affiliated to Parsian Bank, the PECCO posted remarkable growth at 44% in the number of transactions to top the list of PSPs in terms of increase in the number of payments. Pasargad Electronic Payment came after with 43% growth in the volume of transactions.
Beh Pardakht also recorded 19% increase in number transactions last year, though it lost 0.9% of the market share.
The report also said the three major firms held the lion’s share of transactions via POS terminals. Beh Pardakht alone handled 21.9% of total POS transactions followed by SEP with 19% and PECCO 16.9%.
PECCO also handled the highest number of transactions made via online payment gateways with 29.7%. PES had the largest share of mobile transactions with 28.3%.
Twelve PSPs operate in Iran’s growing digital payment industry affiliated to banks. The central bank’s stringent regulations for setting up a PSP have disallowed the emergence of new players in the lucrative market.
Global Ranking
Seven Iranian payment service providers were among the world’s top 150 acquirers, according to the last report by Nilson Report, a journal specializing in payment industry news and statistics.
Behpardakht Mellat, affiliated to Bank Mellat, ranked 13th on the list with over 5.68 billion transactions in 2020. With 4.82 billion transactions SEP was 16th. PECCO came in 22nd with 3.79 billion transactions while Asan Pardakht Persian ranked 23rd.
Collectively, the seven companies handled 27.79 billion purchase card transactions in 2020. The transactions increased 23.5% in 2020.
The Nilson Report said the largest merchant acquirers in the Middle East and Africa are in Iran, adding that all seven acquirers in Iran processed more card payments than the largest Visa and Mastercard acquirer in the MEA region.
Shaparak Company said earlier that it has plans to rate payment service providers. "PSPs will be ranked based on their compliance with rules and the quality of service," Kazem Dehqan, the company's director was quoted as saying.
The rating can influence PSP income as "transaction fees will be calculated and distributed based on the ranking," Dehqan said.
