ISLAMABAD: Pakistan aims to make all federal and provincial government payments fully digital by the end of this year, State Minister for Finance Bilal Azhar Kayani said on Tuesday, as Islamabad moves to expand electronic transactions and improve transparency in public spending.
Pakistan remains heavily reliant on cash, a factor that economists say enables tax evasion and limits financial transparency. They say wider adoption of digital payments could boost government revenue, reduce corruption, and make transactions safer.
The country has been promoting digital payments through initiatives such as the Raast instant payment system and by expanding mobile and branchless banking services.
“The objective is to have, by the end of this year, government payments by all governments in the country, provincial and federal, to be totally digital,” Kayani said while speaking at the Pakistan Banking Summit in Karachi.
He shared that the number of digital banking users across Pakistan had reached around 135 million, surpassing the government’s target of 120 million for June 2026.
He explained that the government was trying to ensure that every pensioner, employee, and vendor is paid digitally by year’s end.
The minister said that this would eliminate the need for them to make payments through checkbooks and by visiting offices, and would “both reduce friction and increase convenience.”
According to data by Pakistan’s central bank, digital channels accounted for 92 percent of Pakistan’s 3.7 billion retail payment transactions in the January-March quarter this year.
Digital channels include mobile banking apps, Internet banking, ATMs, point-of-sale terminals, e-commerce platforms, and call-center-based interactive voice response services.
Pakistan’s central bank said in June that app-based payments carried out through branchless banking providers, commercial banks and electronic money institutions reached 2.9 billion transactions from January to March 2026. These transactions were valued at Rs42 trillion ($140.5 billion), accounting for 78 percent of all digital payments in the country.
The Raast instant payment system maintained its growth momentum by processing 742.1 million transactions worth Rs23.3 trillion ($77.9 billion) in the same period.
