An estimated 3.87 billion retail transactions were processed by the domestic electronic payment network Shaparak in the sixth month of the calendar year to Sep 22.
These were worth 7,206 trillion rials ($22.17 billion) – down 4.29% in volume and 6.56% in value on the month before, the company said on its website.
Transactional value jumped 11.35% on the same month last year when 3.42 billion transactions worth 6,471 trillion rials ($19.9b) were processed. In volume terms it was up 12.9% y/y.
Shaparak presents figures in real value terms to adjust for inflation. When adjusted for inflation, the real value of transactions was up 4.29% on a monthly basis.
Real value was down 25.59% from the same month last year not factoring annual inflation. As per data from the Statistical Center of Iran, the consumer price index in the month to September 22 climbed 2.18% on a monthly basis and 49.64% from the same period last year.
Regarding assorted services offered by the network, 89.72% was for buying goods and services. Buying cellphone recharges and paying bills was second at 6.26% while 4.02% of the transactions were for checking bank a/c balances.
The number of instruments for processing payments was up 5.17% from the earlier month, reaching 9.23 million.
However, growth was noticeable in online payment gateways, which increased 12.15% from 461,632 to 517,731. Total POS terminals, mostly used by retail outlets, increased 4.86% to 8.58 million devices, and the number of mobile payments plunged 0.04% to 128,470 in the month.
As is the norm, POS devices topped the list of instruments with the biggest market share at 92.44% followed by online payment gateways at 4.58% and mobile instruments 2.71%.
$19b POS Transactions
Processing more than 3.5 billion transactions worth 6,161 trillion rials ($18.9 billion), POS devices accounted for 85% of the total volume of transactions.
Based on the report, there were 1,493.56 instruments per 10,000 adults (above 18 years old) and POS terminals topped the list with 1,389.04 instruments per 10,000 adults.
Mobile instruments had the lowest penetration rate with 20.78 instruments for every 10,000 adults. Tehran topped the list of provinces with the highest number of POS terminals. There were 1.48 million active POS devices in the sprawling metropolis – 5.1% lower on the earlier month.
This was followed by Khorasan Razavi with 658,491 and Isfahan 565,972 active devices. Ilam Province had the least POS devices at 60,683.
Almost one-third of the transactions made via POS terminals were each worth 50,001 to 250,000 rials. More than 52.4% of the total POS transactions were above 250,000 rials.
Electronic payments processed by Iran’s domestic payment network grew 14.8% in the first half of the current fiscal year (started March), compared to the same period last year.
According to the Central Bank of Iran data seen on its website, the network processed an estimated 21.8 billion transactions during the period. The number of transactions was 19.1 billion in the first half of the previous fiscal year.
