Competition remains intense in the retail electronic payment industry, with Saman Electronic Payment company topping the list of service providers in terms of the total number of transactions in the fiscal month to April 20, Shaparak company, Iran’s electronic card network, reported.
SEP, affiliated to Saman Bank, processed 21.25% of the transactions during closely followed by Beh Pardakht Mellat Company affiliated to Bank Mellat with 20.17%.
Parsian Electronic Commerce Company, owned by Parsian Bank, was next at 17.63% followed by Asan Pardakht Persian with 9% and Pasargad Electronic Payment 8.42%.
Beh Pardakht Mellat topped the list in terms of the collective value of transactions in the said month with 20% share. Saman Electronic Payment was second with 17.64% share, followed by PECCO 12.49% and Iran Kish Credit Card Company 11.22%.
Asan Pardakht, however, has maintained the top slot in online payments, thanks to its widely used mobile application and collaboration with major online shops and services platforms.
However, it processed nearly 41.97% of transactions via online payment gateways, 2 percentage points lower than the month before.
The company apparently processes low-value transactions as it only accounted for 6.3% of the total value of e-payments. Beh Pardakht was at the top with 30% share.
SEP ranked first in terms of the total number of transactions using POS terminals with 21%. Beh Pardakht managed to take the lead in transactions via mobile gateways, alone accounting for 37.5% of transactions, 2.22 percentage points higher than the month before.
Twelve PSPs are authorized to operate in Iran’s digital payment industry and are mostly affiliated to banks. Stringent rules announced by the Central Bank of Iran for setting up a PSP have slowed the emergence of new players in the electronic payment market.
More than 3.196 billion retail transactions were processed by the local payment settlement network during the month.
The transactions were worth 5,438.79 trillion rials ($19.21 billion) – up 11% in volume but down 26.89% in value from the month before, the Shaparak website reported.
The value of transactions rose 32.45% on the same month last year when 2.81 billion transactions worth 4,196.8 trillion rials ($14.82b) were processed.
