More than 3.6 billion retail transactions were reported by the domestic payment settlement network, known as Shaparak, in the final month of the Iranian calendar year that ended on March 20.
The transactions were worth 7,439.51 trillion rials ($27.55 billion), up 11.84% in volume and 16.95% in value from the month before, according to the monthly report seen on the Shaparak website.
The rise in transactions is apparently due to the tendency of consumers to buy gifts and new clothes in the run-up to the Nowruz, the Persian New Year on March 21.
Some observers say the upward trajectory is a promising sign that businesses are slowly but steadily returning to the pre-Covid era.
The value of e-transactions rose 27.78% on the same month last year when 3.23 billion transactions worth 5,822.06 trillion rials ($21.56 billion) were reported. In volume terms it was up 11.61% y/y.
Shaparak presents figures in real value terms to adjust for inflation. However, when adjusted for inflation, the real value of transactions rose 15.47% on a monthly basis.
Likewise, the real value of transactions fell 5.13% on the same month last year when factoring out annual inflation.
Shaparak offers services via Internet, cellphone and point of sale (POS) devices.
The number of instruments for processing payments showed 4.53% decline from a month ago reaching 10.23 million. This fall was attributed largely to mobile instruments, which dropped 32.51% to reach 405,991.
Reaching 667,067, internet payment gateways fell 18.79% during the aforementioned period and point-of-sale devices in shops declined 1.45%.
As is usually the case, POS devices topped the list of instruments with the biggest market share with 89.51%. This was followed by online payment gateways with 6.52% and mobile instruments 3.97% of the total market share.
Processing more than 3.33 billion transactions worth 6,558.12 trillion rials ($24.29b), POS devices accounted for 92.49% of the total transactions.
Second on the list were online gateways accounting for 4.58% of the total number of transactions followed by mobile instruments at 2.93%.
Payment Services
In terms of services offered by Shaparak, data show that during the month 87.84% of the transactions were conducted for “buying goods and services. “Buying cellphone recharges and paying bills” was second accounting for 6.81% of the services and 5.34% of the transactions were for “checking bank account balances.”
Based on the report, there were 1,655 instruments per 10,000 adults (above 18 years old). As always, POS terminals were at the top with 1,481 instruments per 10,000 adults.
Mobile Instruments had the lowest penetration rate with 65 instruments per 10,000 adults.
Tehran Province topped the list of provinces with the highest number of POS terminals. There were 1.71 million active POS devices in the sprawling metropolis, which was down 2.62% from the earlier month.
This was followed by Khorasan Razavi with 711,419 and Isfahan 603,885 active devices. Ilam Province had the lowest number of POS devices at 62,659.
