Pakistan counts 2.03 million digital payment points as government payouts move to Raast
A Finance Ministry update to the National Assembly says active payment points rose 306 percent in a year, and that Raast now carries more than 84 percent of government payout transactions.
Pakistan had 2.03 million active digital payment points by June 2026, up from a baseline of 500,000, according to a Finance Ministry document submitted to the National Assembly. The ministry puts the rise at 306 percent. About 1.73 million of those points are merchants who accept payments through Raast QR codes.
The document reports progress on the Cashless Pakistan initiative, which the government launched in June 2025. The State Bank of Pakistan tracks it against four indicators, and the payment point count is the one the government had set at 2 million for June. State Minister for Finance Bilal Azhar Kiyani had said on 10 September that merchants had passed that target, crediting in part a Rs3.5 billion subsidy for Raast QR.
Payouts shift to Raast
The sharper change is in what the state pays out. Government to person disbursements made through Raast and digital banking at centralised federal and provincial entities rose from Rs472 billion in July 2025 to Rs4.402 trillion in June 2026. That is 76 percent of all disbursements by federal and provincial governments, including Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit Baltistan.
Raast processes more than 84 percent of those payout transactions, or 39.5 million of them. The Benazir Income Support Programme moved its payments directly to beneficiaries' mobile wallets in July 2026.
Entities that pay their own bills are further behind. Of Rs1.669 trillion allocated to them, Rs1.247 trillion, or 75 percent, was disbursed digitally. The group includes the Central Directorate of National Savings, the Pakistan Post Office Department, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Geological Survey of Pakistan and provincial forest departments.
State owned enterprises trail the rest. By value, 34 percent of their government to person payments and 18.4 percent of their person to government payments are digital.
Users and transactions
Users of mobile, internet app and digital banking services rose from 95 million to 137 million, and digital transactions from 6.9 billion to 11.9 billion. The share of remittances credited to accounts and wallets rose from 80 percent to 92 percent. A Finance Division statement on 6 July put annual digital transactions at 11.3 billion and banking users above 135 million, so the October document gives higher figures for both.
December deadline
The ministry has set up a data collection portal and picked 25 high impact federal and provincial entities to speed up the move. Pakistan Railways and the Ehsaas assignment accounts are still being connected. Domestic billers are being required to introduce QR codes.
The government says it remains on track to digitise all public sector payments by December 2026. A third party firm hired by the Finance Division is assessing progress, and the ministry has asked for gaps in reporting to be closed and duplicate data removed.
