Raast Payments Pakistan is no longer just a government project inside the central bank. The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has formally incorporated Raast Payments Pakistan Pvt Ltd as a wholly-owned subsidiary, giving it its own CEO, its own C-suite, and a clear mandate to run and grow the country’s instant payment infrastructure independently. This is one of the most important structural shifts in Pakistan’s digital payments story, and most people have not noticed it yet.
What Raast Payments Pakistan Is and Why It Matters
Raast launched in January 2021 as Pakistan’s first national instant payment system. It was built by the State Bank of Pakistan and operates using the Pakistan Faster Payment System (PFPS), settling small-value retail payments in real time, including bank-to-bank peer-to-peer (P2P) and person-to-merchant (P2M) transfers.
For years, the system ran as a department-level initiative inside the SBP. That has now changed. Raast is now operated by Raast Payments Pakistan (Private) Limited (RPP), a wholly-owned subsidiary of the State Bank of Pakistan, responsible for the operational management, enablement, and ongoing evolution of the Raast scheme and its services in close coordination with ecosystem participants.
This is more than a name change. Creating a separate legal entity means RPP can hire commercial talent, build its own governance structures, enter contracts, set service-level agreements, and respond to the market much faster than a central bank department ever could.
Raast Payments Pakistan Now Has Its Own CEO
The clearest sign of this shift is at the leadership level. Ahson Bin Saeed assumed charge as Chief Executive Officer of Raast Payments Pakistan (Pvt) Ltd with effect from January 12, 2026, according to an official communication issued to banks, DFIs, and microfinance banks by the State Bank of Pakistan.
Ahson Bin Saeed is a seasoned fintech leader with nearly two decades of experience in digital payments, banking technology, and financial services. He previously served as Managing Director at Keenu, a licensed Electronic Money Institution widely present in Pakistan’s digital payments market, and has worked with global payment technology players such as TPS Worldwide.
RPP is also filling out its full leadership bench. The company has advertised critical leadership roles including Chief Technology Officer, Chief Risk Officer, Chief Business Officer, and General Manager Operations. In May 2026, the State Bank of Pakistan announced a vacancy at Raast Payments Pakistan Pvt Ltd for the position of Chief Technology Officer, based in Karachi. This is a company being built from the ground up, not just rebranded.
The Numbers Behind the Growth
The urgency to institutionalize Raast makes sense when you look at the volume it now carries. The first trillion rupees in transactions took 360 days to process, but the same volume is now achieved every nine days.
By the first quarter of FY 2025, the Raast platform was being used to settle transactions worth Rs4.79 trillion (around US$17 billion), with Rs4.69 trillion of it being peer-to-peer transfers, up from just Rs100 billion at the end of FY 2022.
That kind of scale demands professional management, not a project team inside a regulator. A standalone company can invest in technology, hire engineers and risk specialists, and respond to operational issues without going through central bank approval chains.
What the Government Wants From RPP
The SBP has set an ambitious near-term goal for Raast. The central bank has targeted routing all government payments through Raast by the end of fiscal year 2025-26.
To push merchant adoption alongside this, the government has allocated a Rs3.5 billion subsidy programme to encourage merchants to adopt Raast and reduce the cost of digital transactions. Under the scheme, merchants are reimbursed at a rate of 0.5% of the value of each person-to-merchant (P2M) QR code-based transaction or Rs100, whichever applies.
The challenge is real. Currently, over 85% of Pakistan’s transactions are conducted in cash, costing the country trillions of rupees each year in lost taxes, cash-handling costs, and idle liquidity. RPP’s job is to chip away at that number.
What Changes for Banks, Fintechs, and Merchants
This is the part most coverage has missed. When Raast sat inside the SBP, banks and fintechs were essentially plugging into the central bank itself. Now they will deal with a commercial subsidiary that has its own management team, its own SLAs, and its own commercial relationships.
Raast provides low-cost, universal access for participants across the financial industry, including commercial banks, microfinance banks, government entities, and regulated fintechs such as Electronic Money Institutions and Payment Service Providers, to build scalable, always-on payment experiences for customers and merchants.
With a standalone company running the rails, fintechs and EMIs should expect faster onboarding decisions, clearer technical documentation, and more defined commercial terms. The flip side is accountability: RPP can be held to service standards in a way that a central bank department could not easily be.
Since its launch, forty-four entities including SBP-regulated and government entities have been onboarded on Raast as participants. The SBP envisages that issuing formal Raast Participation Criteria will significantly enhance the number of participants, promote digital payments, and encourage innovation and competition in the payments market.
For everyday users, including freelancers, small business owners, and anyone sending money via mobile banking, very little changes day-to-day. In Pakistan, real-time payments means the instantaneous, 24/7 transfer of funds between individuals, businesses, and government entities through Raast, primarily covering small-value retail payments including peer-to-peer transfers, person-to-merchant transactions, and bulk disbursements like salaries and pensions. That continues unchanged.
If you want to understand the broader fintech ecosystem RPP now sits inside, the SBP Regulatory Sandbox Cohort 1 is a useful companion story: those six shortlisted fintechs will likely become some of the first new participants to plug into RPP’s evolving rails. And the growth of Raast fits squarely into Pakistan’s broader fintech and startup momentum, which recently crossed a $4 billion ecosystem valuation.
PRISM Plus Launched at the Same Time
The incorporation of RPP did not happen in isolation. In parallel with Raast’s institutionalization, the SBP introduced PRISM+, the Pakistan Real-Time Interbank Settlement Mechanism Plus, replacing the older RTGS infrastructure that had served for over a decade. The new platform allows real-time settlement of both funds and securities on a delivery-versus-payment basis, reducing systemic risk and improving efficiency across financial markets.
Together, RPP and PRISM+ represent a full-stack upgrade of Pakistan’s payment plumbing: the retail layer now has its own dedicated company, and the wholesale settlement backbone has been modernized too.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Raast Payments Pakistan Pvt Ltd a private company?
No. Raast Payments Pakistan (Private) Limited (RPP) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the State Bank of Pakistan, responsible for the operational management, enablement, and ongoing evolution of the Raast scheme. It is incorporated as a private limited company in legal form, but it is fully owned by the central bank.
Does this change how I send money through Raast?
No, not for end users. The system operates 24/7, processing payments in seconds across all participating institutions with no specified cut-off times. The incorporation of RPP is a governance and structural change that mainly affects how banks, fintechs, and merchants connect to the system behind the scenes.
Who can connect to Raast as a participant?
Raast provides low-cost, universal access for participants across the financial industry, including commercial banks, microfinance banks, government entities, and regulated fintechs such as EMIs and PSPs. The SBP published formal Raast Participation Criteria in February 2025 to make the onboarding process clearer for new entrants.
What is the difference between Raast and PRISM Plus?
Raast handles everyday retail payments between individuals, merchants, and government, while PRISM+ is the large-value interbank settlement system. Pakistan’s Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system, now PRISM+, supports settlement for large-value and corporate payments, whereas Raast is purpose-built to facilitate everyday retail payments with significantly greater speed, reach, and efficiency.