September 19, 2007	Wednesday	Ramazan 06, 1428

KARACHI, Sept 18: Despite massive investment to promote the business of credit cards, the growth in this sector was not attractive as reflected in a report issued by the State Bank on Tuesday.

All major banks have issued credit cards and millions were spent to promote the most profitable business but the growth in the last quarter of 2006-07 was just 2.1 per cent.

Credit cards recorded a growth of 2.1 per cent to reach 1.69 million. However, debit cards grew with much bigger speed. Total number of active cards grew by 4.8pc reaching the level of 5.8 million while debit cards recorded a growth of 5.1pc and stood at 3.98 million.

Credit card users have to pay up to 40 per cent as interest. The card users also have serious complaints against the attitude of banks towards customers who claim that late payment is charged despite timely payment.

The SBP report showed that e-banking has substantially increased and the graph is moving up.

“The volume and value of e-banking transactions during last quarter of 2006-07 reached 28 million and Rs3.1 trillion respectively, recording a growth of 9.7pc in numbers and 14.2pc in amount,” said the SBP report.

The total number of ATM machines reached 2,294 with a growth of 5.5 per cent.

The report said 99 per cent ATMs users made cash withdrawals and only one per cent use was made for payment of bills and other purposes.

The total number of ATM transactions increased by 9.3pc in the fourth quarter of financial year 2006-07 and stood at 14.4 million, whereas the amount of such transactions was Rs88.2 billion; showing a growth of 10.4pc over previous quarter.

The use of electronic channels is consistently growing as contribution of electronic transactions increased to 24.9pc in number terms and in value terms constitute 8.8pc of total retail transactions, as compared to 24.2pc and 9.1pc, respectively, in the previous quarter, said the report.

However, value of electronic transactions declined, compared with the previous quarter due to heavy tax payments through paper-based instruments.

The report disclosed that the share of online branches in the total branch network increased from 53pc in the previous quarter to 54pc in the current quarter

During this quarter, banks converted 45 manual/computerised branches into online branches and added 44 new online branches, raising the total number of online branches from 4,090 to 4,179.

The total number of online branches recorded for this year is 4,179 out of total 7,719.