1LINK (Guaranteed) Limited

In the past decade, Pakistan banking industry has undergone a paradigm shift that has significantly evolved traditional banking structure by combined power of three industry change drivers Innovation, Digitisation and Collaboration. 1LINK - the interoperability wheel of Pakistan's financial industry has been a major contributor in this industry shift by offering flexible payments and transaction services.
1LINK was founded as an ATM switch, however, Innovation being one of the core values of 1LINK, new products were designed to enable and equip financial industry with efficient and robust services. Our first step towards innovation was to transform funds transfer process from paper cheques, pay orders and other time taking instruments to quick and real time process, therefore we introduced Interbank Funds Transfer Facility (IBFT), which opened new ways of funds transfer for consumers. Today, IBFT is the service that enables interoperable funds transfer in Pakistan.
1LINK has always been at the forefront when it comes to offer a modern yet cost effective and ubiquitous payment solution. Keeping its convention of offering new, secure, and more convenient ways to pay, 1LINK in guidance of State Bank of Pakistan, launched Pakistan's First Domestic Payment Scheme - PayPak.
In Pakistan where 87% population is unbanked, due to high cost of banking, lack of proximity of financial channels and localised financial information technology infrastructure, financial inclusion of unbanked population is a major challenge. To address this, State Bank of Pakistan has design National Financial Inclusion Strategy (NFIS) and a strategic plan that shared as SBP Vision 2020, in which State Bank of Pakistan has outlined current payment and banking system infrastructure requirement and strategic goals to be achieved in next 05 years.
At present, all banks in Pakistan issue debit and credit cards in alliance with global payment scheme, which is not only expensive in terms of connectivity and issuance but also at acceptance network of merchants due to high interchange per transactions. Pakistan is already a highly underpenetrated market with low card usage, where high operational and maintenance charges of global payment scheme make it more vulnerable for the market.
Different countries have launched their own payment schemes based on their local strategy and market requirement. With this launch, Pakistan became 28th Country to launch its own domestic payment scheme. Pakistan's Domestic Payment Scheme; PayPak has shifted the dependency on global payment schemes for domestic card issuance and acceptance. Now banks can issue a domestic card to masses and accept at low cost as transactions will be routed and settled locally. This initiative will also help in reducing the outflow of foreign exchange to global payment schemes as a part of fee payment.
Domestic Payment Scheme launch is a step towards achieving strategic goal of financial inclusion of unbanked and underserved population of Pakistan in the documented economy and providing robust and modern payment system. Moreover, with domestic payment scheme, it will be easy to innovate and launch new products according to local market requirement such as pension cards, G2P cards, and benefit cards. Hence, every citizen of Pakistan can benefit from the new payment scheme as it will provide cost effective, safe digital financial channel and acceptability.
We aim to provide a robust payment system which is inexpensive, safe, and efficient alternative not only for the banked population in the country but also an opportunity to offer low cost payment services to the unbanked citizens thus bringing them in the sphere of financial inclusion.