Raast projected to process USD 500 bn in transactions this year

Pakistan’s instant payment system, Raast, is projected to process online transactions worth more than $500 billion [Rs140 trillion] in 2026, exceeding the size of the domestic economy estimated at $452 billion for FY26.

 

Speaking at the 19th Mobile Commerce, CEO Raast Payments Pakistan, Ahson Saeed, said on Tuesday that the central bank is set to introduce a new consent-based “pull payment” method, allowing businesses and service providers to collect payments directly from customers’ bank accounts after obtaining their prior approval. The system, currently being tested and expected to launch soon, will be supported by tokenisation technology to enhance transaction security.

 

Today, Raast processes roughly 10-11 million transactions, amounting to more than Rs500 billion on a peak day.“So, if you go on this trajectory, we will end up processing more than $500 billion worth of payments by the end of this calendar year, and that would be more than the country’s GDP, at around 1.2 or 1.3-multiple of GDP”, Saeed said.

 

A total of 646 million transactions amounting to Rs18 trillion were processed through Raast during the second quarter (October-December) of FY26. This, compared with projected $500 billion in transactions, shows how rapidly the digital payment system and the digital economy are growing in the country.

 

“We are laying down some very interesting components that would allow bringing new payment methods on top of the existing rail through tokenisation and a consent-based architecture”, Saeed said.

 

“As we progress forward, we will see that some players will come out with a PISP (Payment Initiation Service Provider) proposition, where consent can be taken prior to the execution of a payment, and then the payments can be pulled. It is already in testing and is already in the process of being launched very soon”, he added.

 

Sindh IT Minister Ali Rashid said IT is a fast-moving subject. The provincial government is working hard on digital assets and crypto assets. “The number of investors in crypto has grown significantly higher than at the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX),” he said.

 

Najeeb Agrawalla, CEO, 1Link (Private) Limited, said they are celebrating 10 years of the introduction of PayPak, which has shown remarkable penetration. “We are going to launch PayPak credit card and tokenisation-based transactions both in 2026”, he said.

 

Head of Digital Public Infrastructure at Karandaaz Pakistan, Faisal Mahmood, said Pakistan has already provided digital infrastructure for the growth of digital payment systems. The question is now “how to get economic value for the infrastructure.” “We have to work on the adoption and scale of online payment systems [to get the required economic value]”, he added.

Source: The International News Pakistan