Kuwait’s Consumer Behavior Turned Online In Six Months Due To Coronavirus

There was a significant growth of KNET’s business in 2020 compared to the previous year, especially during the Coronavirus pandemic, which has caused drastic changes in many consumer behaviors around the world in general and Kuwait in particular, Tariq Orabi, CEO of the Shared Electronic Banking Services Company (KNET) Abdullah Al-Ajmi, said, Al Anba reported.

Al-Ajami said: Since the World Health Organization classified the virus as a global pandemic in March 2020, payment methods have changed from traditional monetary methods to online payment methods including paying through points of sale (PoS) devices instead of turning to cash to reduce contact as much as possible.

He pointed out that the first six months of the outbreak of the epidemic have witnessed a clear change according to many international studies in this aspect, with data showing the consumer behavior in Kuwait turned online in just 6 months, due to coronavirus instead of being prolonged to around 50 years for individuals and establishments in normal conditions.

Al-Ajmi stated the matter was clearly evident through the growth rates in online payments via the Internet, which reached 134% in 2020 compared to 2019, and the noticeable decline in cash withdrawals via ATMs, which decreased in the past year by 39% compared to 2019.

Al-Ajami continued, “The previous period witnessed a remarkable increase in the use of the contactless payment feature at PoS devices, which constituted 76% of the total amounts of POS operations.

Returning to the “KNET” platform, Al-Ajmi pointed out that this platform has become available at more than 2000 online stores in Kuwait to carry out operations of more than KD96 million dinars, and thus, is characterized by high growth from year to year compared to other services provided by the company.

Al-Ajmi confirmed that the number of online entities that benefited from the company’s services by the end of 2020 reached 2,052, with a growth rate of 20%, while the number of monetary transactions carried out during that period increased to KD6 billion, with a growth rate of 117% for a total of KD96.3 million worth of operations in 2020, with a growth of 82%.

 

SOURCE KUWAITOFFERINGS

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