Online payments record sound growth

Kathmandu, Nov. 18

Online payments, including QR-based payment, wallet, mobile banking and e-commerce payment have significantly increased in the last three months.

According to the reports of the Payment Systems Department of the Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) for the month of Shrawan (mid-July to mid-August), Bhadra (mid-August to mid-September) and Ashwin (mid-September to mid-October) of Nepali calendar, online payments have witnessed a steady growth.

Rs. 6.09 billion QR-based payments were made in Ashwin, Rs. 5.85 billion in Bhadra and Rs. 5.05 billion Shrawan.

The central bank has launched a nation-wide campaign to promote QR-based payments in businesses ranging fom groceries, vegetables to restaurants and service industry.

Likewise, point of sales (POS) payment has increased to Rs. 4.84 billion from Rs. 3.51 billion in the past three months. Wallet payment also increased by more than a billion rupees. It went up from Rs. 14 billion in Shrawan to Rs. 15.18 billion in Ashwin end. Approximately 13.56 million transactions were made via various mobile wallet applications.

Similarly, mobile banking witnessed a growth of about Rs. 15 billion as Rs. 87.7 billion was paid through mobile banking in Ashwin while the size of such payment two months earlier was Rs. 72.8 billion.

However, online payments made using cards were still small with just Rs. 455 million.

As per the NRB report, ConnectIPS has become the largeset online payment platform. About Rs. 239.14 billion was paid via this application in 3.51 million transactions. The size of amount paid via ConnectIPS in Shrawan was Rs. 232.54 billion.

There are 10 payment system operators (PSOs) and 28 payment system providers (PSPs) other than the banks and financial institutions in Nepal.

Similarly, number of PSP agents has reached 10,030 by mid-October. It was 9,699 in mid-July. There are 1.02 million wallet users, 1.23 million internet banking customers, 15.15 million mobile banking customers and 688,606 ConnectIPS users in the country.

 Published in The Rising Nepal daily on 19 November 2021.