KARACHI: The State Bank of Pakistan Governor Ashraf Mahmood Wathra on Wednesday said that digital financial inclusion is going to be the cornerstone of the National Financial Inclusion Strategy (NFIS) that is currently in formulation stage.

In a workshop on Inclusion-Effective Interoperability, he said: “In SBP’s vision, ‘Payment System’ and ‘Financial Inclusion’ are mutually-reinforcing, and their linkages are expected to deepen further in future.”

He stated that the mobile phone subscribers in the country were almost 140 million. In contrast, the bank accounts were only 37m, whereas borrowers were just 6m.

“This indicates that there exist a large “financially-excluded” market, facing difficulties in buying goods and services, paying utility bills, borrowing and saving, or investing in their future.

“Registering this un-served market through mobile wallets should be our key objective,” he added.

The branchless banking sector, with an agent network of 168,000 agents, 4.2m mobile wallets and Rs1,063 billion worth of transactions for the last year, has not been able to register mobile wallets in comparison to the potential market.

Published in Dawn, October 23rd, 2014