The Multicaixa interbank channel also maintains its popularity, with a growth of 88.3 percent in 2021, out of a total of 338.2 million transactions carried out.
The increase in the use of electronic means of payment has been removing customers from branches, which explains the reduction in the number of branches (-3.3 percent compared to 2020) and the reduction in the number of workers (-5.2 percent percent), from 20,796 in 2020 to 19,719 employees in 2021.
The study emphasizes that the national financial system is evolving towards being an increasingly digital and less face-to-face banking, which also makes greater security and reliability of IT media urgent.
However, the informal economy (which absorbs around 80 percent of jobs) “continues to have a high weight and its transactions are based on cash, so electronic means of payment still have significant room for growth”, he says. .
The National Bank of Angola (BNA) intends to implement the Instant Transfers System in 2023, which will allow the payment of transactions in real time, via mobile phone, helping to increase the “credibility of the financial system with the fringes of the population that operate in the informal market”. and which currently trade exclusively in cash”.
With regard to the use of automatic teller machines (ATM) there was a growth of 6 percent, while the number of Multicaixa cards issued increased from 8.4 to 8.9 million in 2021 (an increase of seven percent).
The number of ATMs increased by 3.1 percent, from 3,148 to 3,247 machines, while POS terminals increased by 12.8 percent (16,696 more terminals compared to 2020).
