MANAMA: Benefit, the operator of Bahrain’s national electronic fund transfer system (EFTS), has reported a massive increase in online payment transactions in 2021 from an accelerated adoption of e-commerce in the wake of the pandemic.
Payments through the EFTS surged by 164 per cent in volume year-on-year (YoY), with their total value exceeding BD20 billion in 2021, a jump of 26pc from BD16bn in 2019.
Transactions using the Fawri+ service, which allows individuals or entities to transfer funds of up to BD1,000 per day in less than 30 seconds, totalled 140,580,028 over all channels, increasing by 196pc YoY and exceeded BD4.4 billion in total value in 2021 compared with BD2.2bn in 2020, which is an increase of 97pc.
Fawri+ trades over BenefitPay, the national electronic wallet, increased by 109pc amounting to a value that exceeded BD4.1bn in 2021 when compared with BD1.9bn in 2020.
A total of 9,629,924 Fawri, which allows individuals or entities to transfer any amount within a few hours of the business day, transactions were made showing an increase of 11pc YoY in volume, with their total value exceeding BD15.2bn in 2021 compared with BD13.4bn in 2020, an increase of 14pc.
Transactions using the Fawateer service, which enables real-time bill payments, amounted to a total of 9,111,342 last year, an increase of 117pc in volume, whereas their value exceeded BD640m for 2021 when compared with BD463m for 2020, an increase of 38pc.
Fawateer transactions over BenefitPay increased by 158pc with a total value exceeding BD122m for the year 2021 compared with BD60m for the year 2020, 102pc higher.
Purchases using BenefitPay increased by 111pc with the value exceeding BD4.8bn in 2021 when compared with BD2.3bn in 2020.
By the end of 2021, BenefitPay users had surged to 860,000 from 688,000 as of end-2020.
The total QR code payments exceeded 3.6m in 2021, three-fold higher than the 1.2m in 2020.
Fuel payment transactions’ volume reached more than 5.5m in 2021 compared with 2.3m in 2020, showing an increase of 134pc.
The national digital identity and electronic know-your-customer (eKYC) platform logged up to 204,277 verifications in 2021, which when compared to 73,067 verifications in 2020, shows an increase of 180pc.
The system has registered a total of 277,294 eKYC transactions to date.
The Bahrain Credit Reference Bureau, also operated by Benefit, has issued a total of 264,271 credit reports during 2021 as against 264,824 in 2020.
Moreover, a total of 34,407 reports were issued online last year via the National Portal (Bahrain.bh), data released yesterday shows.
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