The Pakistan Software Houses Association (P@SHA) has called for the launch of a National Digital Merchant Incentive Program to speed up the adoption of Raast and address ongoing gaps in Pakistan’s digital payments ecosystem, particularly in person-to-merchant transactions.
In its fintech policy paper, P@SHA noted that Raast has crossed 260 million transactions with a cumulative value exceeding Rs. 9.5 trillion and has more than 42 million registered users. Despite this scale, merchant adoption remains limited, with fewer than 850,000 active merchant endpoints and annual merchant payments through Raast staying below Rs. 200 billion.
The paper highlighted several structural barriers slowing adoption, including the dominance of cash, weak merchant onboarding processes, poor implementation of merchant-lite accounts by banks, lack of QR code enablement in banking applications, and merchant transaction fees of around one percent. Hidden charges and limited fee transparency were also identified as factors eroding trust and discouraging small businesses from adopting Raast.
P@SHA observed that banks have largely deprioritized Raast-based merchant payments, instead focusing on earnings from government securities and card-based fee models. At the same time, telco-led wallets such as JazzCash and Easypaisa have captured much of the merchant payments market through QR-based solutions. The absence of a unified national QR standard across banking apps has further restricted Raast’s role in retail payments.
To address these issues, the policy paper recommended capped and transparent merchant transaction fees in the range of 0.2 to 0.3%, along with a tiered Merchant Discount Rate model to encourage higher transaction volumes. It also called for mandatory QR integration across all bank applications and the creation of a dedicated Merchant Payments Enforcement Unit within the State Bank of Pakistan.
P@SHA further proposed nationwide incentives such as cashbacks, tax credits, fee waivers, digital merchant tax rebates, and free QR kits. The association emphasized that Raast should be treated as a national utility, requiring coordinated policy enforcement and broad, ecosystem-wide adoption to unlock its full potential.
