KARACHI, May 19: There is a possibility that by the end of 2006 all bank branches in the country would be online and will be providing retail banking services and products of all range electronically. This was stated by State Bank Governor Dr Ishrat Husain here on Thursday while speaking as chief guest at the launching of NIFTeTrust.

The SBP governor said banks would be offering the mobile banking for business transaction through mobile phone without going to a brick and mortal branch. He said: “This is our objective and we are putting in place the entire infrastructure, the legal framework, the technology and the training of the human resources which together will enable us to move towards this very particular goal.”

Dr Ishrat pointed out that such an arrangement reduced the transaction cost from Rs50 per cheque processing to Rs15 for an ATM transaction to less than Rs5 for an online banking transaction.—APP