Retail Payment Systems
In the OIC Member Countries
79
number of credit card holders in the country has increased five-fold since 2000 (Department
for International Development - DFID, UK, 2007). Still credit cards are not very common and
are provided only to people with a certain level of disposable income. As the idea behind this
selective distribution is to evaluate customers’ repayment worthiness before offering them a
credit card, this item has emerged as a status symbol in some of the parts of the world.
Internet Banking
As of 2014, 24 banks offer internet banking services, accounting for a volume share of 4.4%
and a value share of 2.1% in total e-Banking transactions. Internet banking is growing and
believed by bank officials to be at a turning point in growth.
Mobile Phone Banking
As of 2014, thirteen banks use mobile banking to provide financial services to only a little over
1.5 million registered users. Mobile phone banking transactions have shown an upward trend.
In terms of composition of mobile phone banking transactions during the current quarter, the
share of interbank funds transfer (IBFT) is 23.4% in volume and 91.6% in value of
transactions; the share of utility bills payments is 71.7% in volume and 6.8% in value of
transactions and residual share of transactions pertain to funds transfers to merchants. This
shows considerable use of mobile phones for small value transactions.
Point-of-Sale
The total number of PoS machines is 33,802 and both the volume and value of transactions
through this channel increased by around 14.6% and 19.4% respectively in 2014 compared
with that in the same quarter of 2013. While these uses increased, dedicated PoS cards are in
decline because of a shift to debit cards that are equally useable at ATMs and PoS terminals.
Call Centre/Interactive Voice Response (IVR) Banking
As of March 2014, 22 banks offer call centre/IVR banking facilities to customers for bill
payments and account-to-account fund transfers. Over the past 5 years, e-banking transactions
have grown and compared to 2009 the volume and value of such transactions has increased by
154% and 134% respectively. However, the number of transactions through call centre & IVR
banking has decreased from 0.9 million to 700,000. The reason for this decline was due to a
significant shift by consumers towards other more convenient electronic channels such as
mobile banking, internet banking and ATMs.