The State Bank of Pakistan’s latest report on electronic banking indicates that Pakistanis are taking to branchless banking in a big way, such that the ordinary consumers’ relationship to money itself is changing, and with it the whole process of dealing with the banks.Now that mobile banking account deposits have exceeded 120 million, they cannot be ignored, especially as mobile banking apps are used in transactions of Rs 337 trillion, which make up 81 percent of digital transactions. SBP has a crucial role in the process, for it is because of the citizens’ trust in the safety and stability of its product, money, that the system moves to where it is. Also, it marks an important shift in the SBP’s role, where its role as a mint is not so important, though its duty as the guarantor of the currency’s credit becomes more vital than ever before.
Money has had a long journey, from lumps of metal that had to be weighed and assayed, to minted coins of known weight and purity, to entries ina ledger, to the present series of electronic blips that indicate value. There is the new blockchain technology which allows a more permanent and secure records, when money becomes more a record of transactions rather than anything else. One of the hidden functions of money, anonymity, is lost in electronic transactions. The anonymity of the banknote is what enables corruption, including tax evasions. This is what prevents the quick shifting to e-banking. The problem is not so much finding a solution, as detecting a solution when one is found by criminals and the criminally inclined. While neither tax evasion nor corruption affected the credibility of money, unless there was counterfeiting involved, new methods might.
The SBP is likely to find its role not so much changing, as requiring employees with a different skill set. While losing control over the issuance of cash, State Bankers now will have to be nt so much computer literate as almost engineers, adept both at software and hardware. Even before this transformation, banks had adopted computers in so big a way that their operations had become impossible without them. In a way, all that has happened is that depositors have also got computers to help. Sbp and other central banks can only help along the change by ensuring that depositors still feel that their money is safe, both from fraud and from somehow disappearing.
