Manama: Mahmood Rafique, Editor: With 19.5 per cent increase in the volume of point of sale (POS) transactions in 2020, the Kingdom of Bahrain is rapidly moving towards a cashless society.
The statistics released by the Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB) on Wednesday speaks volume of this emerging trend with recording 8.96 million POS transactions in December 2020 an increase of 19.5% compared to December 2019. There was an increase of volume of POS transactions on monthly basis of 8% in December 2020 compared to the previous month.
The total value of the POS transactions were BD233.1 million in December 2020, a monthly change of 5.2% compared with November 2020.
In terms of POS usage tends, restaurants topped the ladder with around 2.3million transactions, up 0.7% on monthly basis worth BD 16.7 million, up 4.9 per cent on monthly basis.
Supermarkets became second with over 1.9million transactions, a monthly increase of 11.1%; followed by department stores recording 656052 transactions, a monthly decrease of 7.6%; health sector witnesses 608,208, monthly increase of 2.8%; and transport sector became fifth in POS transactions of 572,404, a monthly increase of 75.2%.
In terms of value of transactions the Government Services reported BD57.8 million, an increase of 3.5% on monthly basis followed by Supermarkets BD23.6million, an increase of 12.6% on monthly basis; restaurant sector recorded BD16.7million, an increase of 4.9% on monthly basis; Department Stores spending dipped by 9.4% in December to BD 13.8million and Health Sector reporting a monthly surge of 3.2% to BD13.4million.
There has been a major surge in Electronic Fund Transfer System (EFTS) with Fawri+ total transactions reaching 7.4million an increase of 16.4% and 541% increase on monthly and yearly basis. EFTS Fawri+ recorded BD284.1 million in December 2020, an increase of 11.01% and 243.38% on yearly basis.
