SBP unveils strategy for digital payments.

Byline: Mutaher Khan

KARACHI -- State Bank of Pakistan Governor Reza Baqir launched the National Payment Systems Strategy (NPSS) on Friday.

Speaking to a gathering, which included World Bank President David Robert Malpass, Baqir said 'this strategy lays out a road map and action plan for Pakistan to have a modern and robust digital payments network.'

He continued that the key goal of this strategy would be to make access to financial services easier for people and help improve financial inclusion, particularly for women, along with greater documentation of the economy.

The event was attended by key stakeholders including regulators, government entities, banks, telcos, Electronic Money Institutions, Payment System Operators/Providers (PSO/PSPs) and other fintechs.

Baqir announced the issuing of the rules for digital onboarding of merchant, which will help increasing the touch points for digital payments in Pakistan. He also shared that SBP is developing a faster payment system that will simplify the requesting, receiving and sending of payments in the country.

Meanwhile, Malpass in his keynote address acknowledged the latest progress made towards unlocking Pakistan's potential and called the development aptly timed with respect to the country's stabilisation.

'By migrating to electronic means, the strategy intends to boost Pakistan's GDP by seven per cent, create four million jobs, resulting in $263 billion in new deposits, representing a potential market of $36bn, all by 2025,' the newly published document notes.

It notes that the current digital infrastructure is severely lacking both from demand and supply sides, which won't be changed at a mass level unless large recurrent streams like government payments are leveraged upon.

While the country has been on a transformational journey thanks to innovations like branchless banking, it still lags behind countries with similar economic dynamics. That the strategy attributes...