Pakistan

Raast has reached scale via a state-led rather than market-led path

Raast crossed Rs50T cumulative value with ~48m users on SBP's 2025 Financial Stability Review, and Q2 FY26 alone cleared 645.7m transactions worth Rs18.5T (+13% QoQ). The volume curve is the product of mandated routing: SBP has committed to migrating all government payments — BISP, MoD payroll, savings disbursements — onto Raast by end-FY26, with BISP already complete in early March. The 92%-of-retail-transaction-volume figure is a digital-rails-on-rails metric and should be read against still-material cash use by value.

Easypaisa–JazzCash competition is converging on digital-bank economics

Telenor's Easypaisa secured SBP commercial digital-bank approval in December 2025; JazzCash sits behind on a comparable ~47m user base. The competitive question for 2026-27 is whether digital-bank licensing converts the two telco-MFS leaders into competitive deposit-takers against incumbent banks (HBL, MCB, UBL, NBP) — Easypaisa's bank-side P&L through 2026 will be the principal read.

GCC remittance corridor is the macro anchor — and the next contestable cost pool

SBP reported US$30.3bn in FY24 home remittances (+10.7% YoY), with Saudi Arabia (US$7.7bn), UAE (US$7.1bn), UK (US$4.8bn) and US (US$3.6bn) the four big origin pools at average corridor cost above 4%. Roshan Digital Accounts already provide a supervised non-resident channel; the September 2025 Raast-Aani MoU with the UAE central bank is the rail through which the largest single inbound flow (UAE ~US$7.1bn) would compress meaningfully on go-live. Hawala/hundi remains structurally competitive on cash-to-cash.

SBP committed to routing all government payments (BISP, MoD payroll, savings disbursements) through Raast by end-FY26; Q2 FY26 already cleared 645m transactions worth Rs18.5T. The remaining 1LINK ATM/POS volumes are the residual rail share — operators that build merchant tooling tied to Raast QR (live 2023, Rs3.5bn subsidy programme since September 2025) have a state-supported acquisition lane.

Five SBP-licensed digital banks are at differing stages; Easypaisa Digital Bank is in full commercial launch as of December 2025, with Raqami, HugoBank, KT Bank and Mashreq PK targeting end-2026. The cohort is the regulated entry point for foreign-strategic operators that need bank-grade distribution in a 248m-population market.

The Pakistan-UAE bilateral IPS corridor signed under MoU in September 2025 sits on top of the largest single remittance flow (~US$7.1bn). Corridor pricing on the UAE leg would compress by 1-2pp on go-live, transferring fee economics from MTOs and exchange houses to Raast-connected banks and EMIs.