SBP Plans to Set up Specialized Entity for Promoting RAAST Ecosystem

The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) is planning to establish a specialized entity for the Raast payment system to accelerate the innovation and expansion of digital payments in Pakistan. The entity will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), and it will drive rapid innovation while remaining aligned with the State Bank of Pakistan’s (SBP) policy objectives. Its mandate focuses on expanding the usage of Raast by leveraging specialized talent, ensuring operational independence, and fostering rapid innovation and adoption in the digital payments space. Drawing from global examples like UPI (India), FAST (Singapore), JoPACC, PIX (Brazil), and Saudi Payments, this entity is being designed to meet the fast-evolving needs of the payments ecosystem by leveraging specialized talent, operational independence, and market-driven strategies. It is pertinent to mention here that Karandaaz supported the State Bank of Pakistan in creating Raast, an instant payment system enabling low-cost, interoperable digital transactions across various financial service providers. Raast is Pakistan’s national instant payment system, designed to enable real-time, low-value digital payments while ensuring broad, affordable, and inclusive access across the financial ecosystem. It serves a wide range of stakeholders, including commercial banks, microfinance banks, Electronic Money Institutions (EMIs), Payment System Operators (PSOs), government entities, fintech companies, consumers, and merchants. The central bank is also working to integrate Raast with the Buna Payment System of the Arab Monetary Fund to facilitate cross-border transactions from Pakistan to different countries. According to the SBP, over 41 million IDs of different users have been subscribed to the Raast payment system so far. It processed over 295 million transactions of Rs. 6.4 trillion in the quarter. Karandaaz Pakistan is also working with the SBP to enable the effective operationalization of the newly planned entity with a comprehensive suite of policies, which will encompass a wide range of areas, including human resource management, technical operations, financial governance, and administrative functions. The overarching objective of this engagement is to ensure that the entity is equipped with robust, fit-for-purpose policies that provide a strong foundation for sustainable operations, governance, and spurring growth. Karandaaz Pakistan intends to engage a consulting firm to formulate comprehensive operational policies for this entity. The objective is to ensure robust policy frameworks are put in place to guide operations, support scalability, and align with both domestic regulatory expectations and global standards. The consulting firm should include recommendations, based on local and global benchmarks, for the appropriate skill set and competencies required for effective governance and robust operations of the entity. The recommendations must be precise, with rationale presented/documented as a skills matrix mapped to policies and the overall ambition of the entity. Individuals who are nationals, permanent residents of India or Israel, or who originate from India or Israel will not be engaged for the project team or project steering team.