Pakistan has great opportunities for boosting m-banking

Atif Aslam Bajwa, President of MCB Bank Limited, during his speech at the Second International Conference on Mobile Commerce, highlighted that Pakistan had 90 million mobile users and only 26 million bank account holders. The fact means there is a great potential for mobile banking.

Bajwa also stated there was a need for introducing branchless banking in the country. He said, although there was a literacy problem in Pakistan, a great amount of population was numerically educated due to mobile phones. Nowadays, people have to wait in long queues for making basic payment of their utility bills. Whereas, M-Banking could significantly reduce the amount of time and energy spent on the matter. Moreover, Bajwa noted that security measures had to be taken in order for making transaction secure. 

Jameel Ahmed, Executive Director of the State Bank, added that M-Banking will surely provide great advantages to Banking Sector of Pakistan as Banking will not be restricted to Branches after introduction of M-Banking and surely provide Banking to un-bank people.

Abrar Mir, global head of E Commerce UBL, said that currently most of the Pakistani are limited to using their mobile phones for balance and statement queries, while it can provide a wider range of services, including WAP enabled services for transaction and payments.