Tehran, Iran, July 2
By A. Shirazi - Trend:
The volume of inter-banking transactions in the previous Iranian year (ended March 20, 2018) witnessed a significant increase, marking a 106 percent growth compared to the same corresponding period a year before, a report by IRIB news agency said.
According to the report on July 2, the central bank of Iran registered a total of 38,101 inter-banking transactions worth 64 quadrillion rials in the last Iranian year (each USD makes 42,000 rials).
This indicates an increase of 106 percent and 33.2 percent in the value and number of the transactions, respectively, the report added.
Some 17.2 percent of the transactions’ value went to Mellat, Saderat, Tejarat and Refah banks.
“61.9 percent of the total number of the transactions in last fiscal year belonged to state banks and 20.4 percent to private banks,” according to the report.
Iranian banks’ revenues from electronic payment fees do not exceed 30 trillion rials ($681 million) each year and account for only 17 percent of their total earnings, the Central Bank of Iran’s deputy for innovative technologies, Nasser Hakimi, announced.
“This is while banks have to spend about 70 trillion rials ($1.59 billion) for providing e-payment services to their customers, which indicates that they are suffering losses from offering electronic banking services,” Hakimi said.
When a payment is made with a bank card, the bank receiving the payment has to pay a fee to the bank whose card has been used, which is on top of the amount banks have to pay as rent and support fees for each POS device to payment service providers. The ultimate cost of each bank in this regard is calculated based on the benchmark of how much they pay per transaction worth 100,000 rials.