Contactless payments in Bahrain rise for sixth straight month

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MANAMA: Six out of 10 card transactions in Bahrain last month were contactless, continuing the trend for the sixth straight month, shows Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB) data.

Purchase of products and services using credit and debit cards at both points of sale (POS) and online combined shows a jump of 32.8 per cent in volume to 8,217,676 (61.5pc of them contactless) in June, from 6,190,271 in the same month last year, also signalling an acceleration in the cashless economy.

The statistics show that the value of transactions grew 14.5pc year-on-year to BD200.7 million (33.6pc contactless) last month compared with BD175.2m in June 2020.

Since the outbreak of Covid-19 last year, consumers have preferred to use less cash, seeking safer and cleaner payment methods, and banks in the country have responded by issuing credit and debit cards using near-field communication (NFC) technology.

Over the last year most local and international banks have started offering cardless withdrawals from their ATMs using the BenefitPay e-wallet, from Benefit, the kingdom’s only operator of electronic financial transactions.

The service has been made possible because of tokenisation – the process of protecting sensitive data by replacing it with an algorithmically generated number called a token.

The highest number of transactions last month were carried out in restaurants (2,726,671), followed by supermarkets (2,254,605), health services (738,159), government services (537,001) and department stores (508,713).

In terms of value, government services at BD62.9m led the top five sectors, with supermarkets at BD26.2m coming next, followed by restaurants (BD15m), health (BD14.7m) and department stores (BD10.4m).

The infographics show electronic fund transfers in the kingdom increased during June, extending the rising trend to a year.

Transactions using Fawri, Fawri+ and Fawateer services, enabled by the electronic fund transfer system (EFTS), continue to see substantial growth.

Fawri+ is an almost real-time fund transfer service which allows individuals or entities to transfer funds of up to BD1,000 per day in less than 30 seconds; whereas Fawri is a deferred settlement fund transfer service which allows individuals or entities to transfer any amount within a few hours of the business day, and Fawateer provides real-time bill payments.

Last month, Fawri+ accounted for the vast majority, 88pc, of EFTS transactions, followed by Fawri and Fawateer, each at 6pc.

However, in terms of transaction value, Fawri was the leader at 76.3pc, followed by Fawri+ at 21.1pc and Fawateer at 2.6pc.

The number of transactions completed through Fawri+ in June 2021 amounted to 10,638,532, up 220.77pc from 3,316,542 in June 2020.

In terms of value, Fawri+ transactions amounted to BD357.86m last month, up 90.93pc from BD187.43m for the same month last year.

As for Fawri, the number of transactions was up 3.67pc at 720,603 when compared with 695,117.

Transactions made through the Fawateer service amounted to 723,435, higher by 135.28pc than 307,482 in June 2020.

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