Raast volume more than doubles as digital channels reach 92 percent of payments
The State Bank's annual review counts 13.2 billion digital transactions in the year to June, with the instant payment system growing faster than any other rail.
Pakistanis made 14.3 billion retail payments through banks and licensed payment firms in the year to June 2026, and 92 percent of them went through digital channels, the State Bank of Pakistan said in its Annual Payment Systems Review for 2025 to 26, released on 6 October.
The digital share was 88 percent a year earlier and 85 percent the year before that. By count, digital payments reached about 13.2 billion, against 8 billion in the previous year. By value the picture is more modest: digital channels carried Rs257 trillion of the Rs673 trillion total, or 38 percent, up from 29 percent. Large payments still lean on cheques, branches and agents.
Raast more than doubles
The instant payment system Raast handled 2.76 billion transactions worth about Rs80 trillion in the year, up from 1.28 billion transactions worth Rs29.6 trillion the year before. Payments from person to merchant rose from 4.9 million to 182.5 million, and about 3.6 million merchants are now registered on Raast's merchant alias. Another 49.2 million person to person IDs are in use.
QR enabled merchants rose from 1.1 million in June 2025 to 3.8 million a year later, a jump the State Bank ties to the subsidy programme under the Prime Minister's Cashless Pakistan Initiative. Card terminals also spread, up 49 percent to 337,791, helped by software based terminals offered by some acquiring banks.
Phones did most of the work. Mobile channels, including bank apps, branchless banking apps, wallets and USSD, processed more than 11.1 billion transactions, up 79 percent. Merchant payments made straight from accounts and wallets grew 141 percent, against 47 percent for card payments, and account based payments now make up almost 96 percent of ecommerce transactions processed through banks.
Banks, sandbox and cattle markets
PRISM+, the central bank's interbank system, moved to the ISO 20022 messaging standard in August 2025. It settled 6.3 million large value transactions worth Rs1,566 trillion in the year.
Mashreq Bank Pakistan became a scheduled bank on 15 September 2025, and Raqami Islamic Digital Bank followed on 6 February 2026. The first cohort of the State Bank's regulatory sandbox, chosen in January, included Neem, Digi Khata and Swich Retail for open banking, the Bank of Punjab for remote merchant onboarding, and Barq Fintech and Taptap Send for remittances. Sandbox participation is not a licence.
Cashless payments also reached the cattle markets before Eid ul Azha. The initiative covered 123 markets, up from 54, and recorded about 481,000 transactions worth more than Rs34 billion.
