Cross-border transactions down 33.7%
Value of cross-border transactions fell by about 33.7 percent in August compared to July while average volume declined by 4.3 percent in the same period, the Reserve Bank of Malawi (RBM) has said in the August 2014 National Payment System Report.
Although government has put in place measures to facilitate cross-border payments and encourage international trade, there was a decline in cross-border activities in August with the daily average volume of transactions falling to 22 in the month under review from 23 transactions in July.
Similarly, the RBM in its August 2014 National Payment Report, has said that the corresponding value of transactions also decreased by 33.7 percent to 3.1 million rand from about 4.7 million rand between August and July.
The central bank, however, expects the trend in cross-border transactions to improve because all banks in the country are now participating in the Sadc Integrated Regional Electronic Settlement System (Siress).
Signifying its growing popularity among banks, in July 2014, according to the central bank, cross- border payments, especially through Siress, continued to increase with daily average volume of transactions having increased by 15 percent to 23 transactions in July 2014.
According to RBM, corresponding average daily value of transactions almost doubled, increasing 99.3 percent to 4.7 million rand from 2.4 million rand the same period.
On the domestic front, the said total transaction turnover in terms of volume declined by 5.2 percent to 214 034 in July 2014 from 225 833 in June 2014 while the corresponding total daily transaction value decreased by 5.1 percent to K32.4 billion from K34.1 billion over the same period.
The central bank has explained that most of the decline in payments activity was due to temporary suspension of some non-bank and bank-led mobile payment systems due to on-going system upgrades.
Tangible progress was also made on national payments infrastructure modernisation in preparation for the launch of the Automated Transfer System (ATS) on September 26 2014.
