Iran’s Number of Mobile Payments Has Decreased

According to SHAPARAK’s latest report, Iran’s number of payment transactions over mobile payment terminals, in April 2017 has decreased comparing to last year.

In the first month of the current Persian year (1396), the number of transactions over mobile payment terminals decreased to 26 million, which shows a negative growth of 8% comparing to last year. According to SHAPARAK’s report, during this time, a total of 1 billion transactions were made by Iranians, Of which, 984 million transactions were made in the store payment terminals while 106 million were made over the internet. Last year during the same period of time, a total of 115 million transactions were made by Iranians, according to SHAPARAK.

According to ECM, the number of transactions for bill payment and charging prepaid SIM cards over USSD has decreased in Iran, and as a result, the total number of payment transactions over mobile payment terminals has also gone downhill. Note that although the number of transactions for bill payment and charging prepaid SIM cards has decreased, the amount of payments for these transactions has seen a growth.

According to ITmen, with 287 million transactions, Melat Bank is responsible for the biggest number of transactions in the store terminals. After that, Meli Bank with 79 million, Parsian Bank with 74 million, Saderat Iran Bank with 73 million and Keshavarzi Bank with 71 million transactions had the biggest number of transactions. These banks have seen a growth of 95.25%, 25.44%, 39.45%, 9.42% and 72.75% respectively in their number of store terminal transactions compared to last year. According to this report, in the year 1395, Resalat Bank and Sepah Bank accepted 16 and 24 million transactions in the store payment terminals but this number increased to 34 and 47 million in the current year, which shows a great deal of growth for these two banks.

Related: SHAPARAK the Backbone of Card-Based Payment in Iran

In the first month of the current Persian year, a total of 106 million transactions were made over internet payment terminals. Of this number 33 million transactions are accounted for Melat Bank, 16 for Parsian Bank and 15 million for Saman Bank which shows an 8.3%, 4.2%, 7.3% growth, respectively compared to last year.

This recent report also indicates that the most number of transactions over mobile terminals were handled by Melat Bank with 20 million transactions, City Bank with 8.2 million and Ayandeh Bank with 1 million which also indicates a negative growth of -74.77%, -77.53% and -95.87% respectively.

While mobile payment has become a major focus of many FinTech companies around the world, some of the Iranian startups are still battling with the lack of regulations in this sector. Previously it was stated that USSD transactions were becoming limited in the country due to the security risks of this kind of mobile service.