In-store and online merchants: SBP advises banks, REs to offer digital payment solutions

KARACHI: The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has issued the consolidated framework for customer onboarding and advised banks and regulated entities (REs) to provide digital payment acceptance solutions to their customers engaged in instore and/or online business/trade activities.

New customer onboarding framework aims to simplify and standardize the account opening process and rationalize the documentary requirements along with the enablement of digital and convenient interfaces for account opening across different customer touch points.

The SBP has advised REs to ensure that the turnaround time for new account opening does not exceed two days for general public.

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Customers should also be able to track the status of their account opening applications, making the process transparent and customer friendly. These measures are in continuation of SBP’s efforts to enhance financial inclusion and improve customer convenience.

In recent years, the SBP has introduced branchless banking accounts, Asaan accounts, digital onboarding, and specialized account categories for freelancers, recipients of home remittances and overseas Pakistanis. Making the customer onboarding process more convenient, safe and efficient, customers will now be able to open all types of accounts through digital means.

Further, to facilitate the merchants in acceptance of payments digitally, SBP has advised its REs to equip all merchants-both new and existing – with at least one of the digital payment acceptance solutions such as Raast QR code, Point of Sale (POS), e-commerce/Raast checkout to facilitate customers’ digital payments for in-store and/or online purchases. To facilitate the onboarding of small merchants and enabling them with low-cost digital payment acceptance points, SBP has advised its REs to categorize the merchants as micro, small, and registered merchants.

Merchants who have opened accounts/wallets (Asaan Account, EMI wallets & Regular accounts)as natural persons shall be categorized as “micro merchants” with monthly transaction and account/wallet balance limit up to PKR 2,000,000/- (separately for debit and credit) and PKR 3,000,000/- respectively.

Merchants who have opened accounts/wallets as a non-registered entity (sole proprietor or unregistered partnership) shall be categorized as “small merchants”. In addition, merchants registered/incorporated with the relevant authorities shall be treated as “registered merchants”.

Furthermore, in the case of existing merchants’ accounts/wallets, REs shall ensure deployment of at least one digital payment acceptance solution including Raast QR code by October 31, 2025.

The SBP believed that these initiatives will further improve the regulatory environment for mainstreaming the excluded individuals and businesses into banking system and digitizing the existing large-scale cash-based persons-to-merchants payments. Besides, the framework also provides strong regulatory safeguards aligned with international best practices.

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