Safepay has announced the general availability of Raast on its platform, bringing Pakistan’s instant payment infrastructure directly into its payment stack and enabling merchants and fintechs to accept real-time bank transfers with unified operational tooling and developer workflows.
Raast, operated by the State Bank of Pakistan, serves as the country’s instant payment system, allowing immediate interbank transfers using aliases such as mobile numbers, IBANs, or Raast IDs. With this rollout, Raast becomes a fully integrated payment method within Safepay, joining existing options such as cards and digital wallets. The move positions instant bank payments as a production-grade payment rail accessible through a single integration.
The company stated that what began as early integrations with pilot customers has now matured into a scalable infrastructure layer designed for speed, cost efficiency, and operational control. Businesses using Safepay can now accept instant bank payments with real-time confirmation, reduce payment acceptance costs compared to traditional card networks, and improve conversion rates among customers who prefer direct bank transfers.
A key aspect of the rollout is that merchants are not required to build or maintain separate integrations with banks. Instead, Raast operates within Safepay’s existing API architecture. Payments can be initiated through the same payment intent model already used for other methods, with confirmation delivered through established webhook systems. Reporting, reconciliation, and settlement visibility are handled within Safepay’s dashboards and APIs, minimizing operational overhead.
Safepay emphasized that production readiness has been central to the general availability release. Enhancements include real-time payment state tracking and lifecycle event notifications delivered through the same webhook framework merchants already use for card transactions. This standardization ensures consistent operational handling across payment rails.
Automatic reconciliation and settlement reporting have also been incorporated, reducing the need for manual matching between bank statements and internal transaction records. In addition, robust retry and failure-handling mechanisms address edge cases such as delayed confirmations, bank timeouts, or customer interruptions, lowering the operational burden on merchants and fintech platforms.
The integration is expected to be particularly relevant for sectors where customers favor bank transfers over cards. These include education and tuition payments, travel and ticketing services, higher-value e-commerce transactions, government and utility payments, as well as marketplace collections and payouts. Because Raast payments settle instantly and are irrevocable, merchants benefit from immediate confirmation, improved cash-flow timing, and reduced exposure to chargebacks and fraud risks commonly associated with card rails.
From a developer standpoint, Safepay has maintained its principle of minimizing additional complexity when introducing new payment methods. Businesses that have already integrated Safepay can activate Raast using familiar API patterns without redesigning their payment architecture. Integration can be deployed incrementally, tested in staging environments, and rolled out to production at a controlled pace.
General availability also introduces enhanced observability features. Merchants can monitor payment status transitions in real time, track settlement and reconciliation data, analyze failure and exception cases, and review customer payment behavior patterns. This visibility addresses common operational uncertainties associated with bank transfer integrations.
With Raast now a core component of its infrastructure, Safepay is positioning instant bank payments as a foundational layer for Pakistan’s evolving digital payments ecosystem. By combining national-scale instant payment rails with unified payment orchestration, the platform aims to deliver lower acceptance costs, real-time settlement visibility, and consistent reliability without compromising security or developer experience.
Raast integration is now available to Safepay merchants, with onboarding support offered for businesses requiring assistance or handling specific transaction volumes. The rollout signals a shift toward mainstream adoption of instant bank transfers within Pakistan’s fintech and merchant ecosystem.
Follow the PakBanker Whatsapp Channel for updates across Pakistan’s banking ecosystem.