Pace towards branchless banking increases

Customers can now deposit, transfer funds through Easypaisa service.

KARACHI: Wheels towards branchless banking have been set in motion for a while with another step taken in that direction as anyone can now deposit funds in a bank account even after business hours without going to an ATM.

Telenor Pakistan and Tameer Microfinance Bank, on Friday, launched an inter-bank fund transfer (IBFT) application that enables users to deposit and transfer funds into any bank on 1-Link network even after business hours.



A first in the country’s mobile banking segment, the IBFT service will cater to both Over-the-Counter (OTC) customers and mobile accountholders of Easypaisa – a branchless banking service and a joint venture of Telenor Pakistan and Tameer Microfinance Bank.

The account holders can move their funds from any bank account into their Easypaisa mobile account and vice versa, Easypaisa’s Head of Strategy Omar Moeen Malik said during a press demonstration of the product at Telenor’s Karachi office.

The Easypaisa IBFT, officials say is the first mobile money service in Pakistan to become interoperable with the existing banking infrastructure. The product enables its customers to transfer funds between a numbers of banks via 1-Link, an ATM-based interbank payment network.

Traditionally, the unbanked segment has remained the focus of Easypaisa but the latest product, officials say also caters to those already using conventional banking services – the product has a broader application and a long-term objective.

“IBFT is our first ever launch to bridge the banked and unbanked segment of the country,” Tameer Microfinance Bank President and CEO Nadeem Hussain told media.

Talking about Pakistan’s money supply, Hussain said the country has about Rs2.3 trillion cash in circulation. “Our long-term target is to bring that cash into the formal economy.”

The IBFT services has set a new trend by taking the branchless banking towards interoperability with formal banking infrastructure and other players should also launch similar product to boast mobile banking, officials say.

Explaining this point, Telenor Pakistan’s Chief Financial Services Officer Yahya Khan said that all the current closed-loop mobile money services in Pakistan have to strive and move towards open-loop systems where customers can move funds between bank accounts and branchless banking accounts and vice versa.

“We believe that banks and branchless banking services complement each other in Pakistan and can work in harmony to serve everybody in Pakistan,” Khan said.

While demonstrating the working of IBFT service Malik, the product’s strategy head said any OTC customer can walk into any of the Easypaisa shops and deposit cash directly into any bank account.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 14^th, 2014.

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