KARACHI: In a major push toward a cashless economy, the federal government has approved a Rs 3.5 billion subsidy to promote merchant onboarding on Raast and encourage digital payments through QR codes.
According to the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), the incentive will cover Person-to-Merchant (P2M) transactions between September 1, 2025, and June 30, 2026, with financial institutions receiving support at the rate of 0.5 percent of each transaction’s value or Rs 100, whichever is low.
The Federal Government, under the Prime Minister’s Cashless Economy initiative, has approved the targeted support for the SBP Regulated Entities (REs) for promoting onboarding of merchants on Raast and enabling them to digitally receive payments through Raast QR Code.
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The subsidy shall be paid at the rate of 0.5 percent of the value of each Raast P2M QR Code based transaction or Rs 100, whichever is lower. The subsidy is to be shared equally between the Merchant’s Financial Institution and Customer’s Financial Institution (acquiring and issuing Financial Institutions). The REs in addition to the subsidy may charge up to 0.25 percent of the transaction value for on boarding and servicing the merchants.
The subsidy payments will be made to REs on a quarterly basis. In case the total subsidy amount exceeds the annual ceiling of Rs 3.5 billion, the subsidy rate will be revised downward to ensure that each RE gets the subsidy at an equal rate within the budget ceiling.
SBP has advised all REs (Raast Merchant’s FI and Customer’s FI) to ensure compliance with the prescribed process and maintain complete records for verification and audit purposes.
As per eligibility, this scheme will be applicable to all Banks, MFBs, EMIs, PSOs/PSPs providing Raast P2M QR acceptance services Merchant Service Providers (MSPs) and Customer Service Providers (CSPs). Only successful transactions posted in Raast system shall be eligible for subsidy.
REs will submit quarterly subsidy claims based on eligible Raast P2M QR transactions, duly verified by their internal audit function, to Raast Payments Pakistan (RPP) within five (05) working days from the close of the quarter.
The RPP shall verify these claims from the data available in the Raast system. In case of differences (if any), the RPP shall share the same with the concerned RE within 5workingdays. The REs shall reconcile the differences with RPP and submit the final reconciled subsidy claims to RPP within five working days. Non-receipt of the response within the stipulated time will be considered as the deemed consent of the RE with the RPP calculated subsidy amount.
The SBP inspection teams during their regular on-site inspection of the RE may verify the claim on sample basis. In addition, the subsidy claim for the month of September 2025 shall be paid along with the subsidy claims for the quarter ending December 31, 2025. While, the subsidy payments to the REs will be released, after the sanction/release of the funds by the Finance Division, Government of Pakistan.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
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