An estimated 3.71 billion retail transactions were processed by the domestic electronic payment network Shaparak in the seventh month of the Iranian calendar year to Oct 22.
These were worth 7,051.5 trillion rials ($19.31 billion) – down 4.24% in volume and 2.14% in value on the month before, the main company in charge of supervising and maintaining the network said on its website.
Transactional value jumped 18.14% on the same month last year when 3.27 billion transactions worth 5,968 trillion rials ($16.3b) were processed. In volume terms it was up 13.43% y/y.
Shaparak presents figures in real value to adjust for inflation. However, when adjusted for inflation, the value of transactions was down 4.97% on a monthly basis.
Real value was again down 20.49% 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 Oct 22 climbed 2.97% on a monthly basis and 48.59% from the same period last year.
Regarding services offered by the network, 89.88% was for buying goods and services. Buying cellphone recharges and paying bills was second at 6.06% while 4.05% of the transactions were for checking bank a/cs.
The number of instruments for processing payments was up 3.3% from the earlier month, reaching 9.53 million.
However, growth was noticeable in online payment gateways, which increased 7.88% from 517,731 to 558,549. Total POS terminals, mostly used by retail outlets, increased 3.11% to 8.8 million devices but the number of mobile payments plunged 2.24% to 125,597 in the month.
As is the norm, POS devices topped the list of instruments with the biggest market share at 92.83%. This was followed by online payment gateways at 5.86% and mobile instruments 1.32%.
Processing more than 3.44 billion transactions worth 6,053 trillion rials ($16.58b), POS devices accounted for 92.84% of the total volume of transactions.
Based on the report, there were 1,542.92 instruments per 10,000 adults (above 18 years old) and POS terminals topped the list with 1,432.25 instruments per 10,000 adults.
Mobile instruments had the lowest penetration rate with 20.32 instruments for every 10,000 adults.
Tehran topped the list of provinces with the highest number of POS terminals. There were 1.53 million active POS devices in the sprawling metropolis -- 3.01% higher on the earlier month.
This was followed by Khorasan Razavi with 682,759 and Fars with 586,884 active devices. Ilam Province had the least POS devices at 61,910.
Almost one-third of the transactions made via POS terminals were each worth 50,001 to 250,000 rials. Almost 52.4% of the total POS transactions were above 250,000 rials.
The report added that there were about 60.03 transactions per 10,000 adults aged above 18 year old. POS terminals topped the list with 55.73 transactions per 10,000 adults, followed by online gateways with 2.67 transactions and mobile gateways 1.63 transactions.
