Pakistan's National Savings connects with Raast payment system

Through this integration with Raast, customers of CDNS can receive their payments directly into their bank accounts without going to branches. CDNS is the first government entity on-boarded on Raast that will extend SBP’s efforts to digitise payments in Pakistan. Raast is the country’s instant payment system that has enabled end-to-end digital payments among individuals, businesses, and government entities instantaneously.

Pakistan’s Faster Payment System has been used to settle small-value retail payments in real time, while providing a cheap and universal access to all players in the financial industry, including commercial banks, microfinance banks, government entities, and fintechs (EMIs and PSPs). Recently, the SBP withdrew transactional limits of payments made through Raast System i.e. Raast Person-to-Person (P2P) Payment System.

The country has had low electronic transactions for a number of reasons including low banking penetration, lack of trust and awareness of digital payment methods, limited interoperability, difficult accessibility, and high cost of transactions, according to the press release. The Real Time Gross Settlement System (RTGS) of Pakistan provides instant payment settlements for large value and corporate transactions only.