The State Bank of Pakistan has officially published its Payment Systems Review covering the third quarter of the fiscal year 2026, which spans the operational months from January to March. This comprehensive documentation offers an analytical overview of the primary transactional trends taking place across formal financial networks and regulated banking pipelines. The central bank noted that the quantitative analysis focuses solely on structured interactions processed through licensed providers and intentionally excludes any informal financial exchanges conducted outside the official domestic payment system.
According to the official data points, the country recorded an aggregate of three point seven billion retail payments over the course of the three month period, representing a collective monetary value of one hundred and sixty eight point eight trillion rupees. A deep dive into these operational summaries indicates that digital alternative channels now command an overwhelming ninety two percent share of all retail interactions. This digital umbrella covers mobile banking applications, internet banking networks, unstructured supplementary service data platforms, automated teller machines, point of sale retail hardware, electronic commerce checkouts, and interactive voice response call setups. This volume represents a steady nine percent expansion when compared to the transactional metrics achieved during the immediate preceding quarter.
The cumulative volume moving exclusively through digital architectures achieved a milestone of three point four billion payments, tracking an aggregate financial worth of sixty eight trillion rupees. This expansion underscores an accelerating shift toward virtual transaction systems among standard bank account owners and wallet users. Mobile application infrastructures maintained their leading position across the digital arena, accounting for two point nine billion individual transactions managed through portals developed by branchless banking entities, conventional commercial banks, and electronic money institutions. These application driven payments represented seventy eight percent of the entire digital matrix, generating forty two trillion rupees in transaction value while facilitating retail peer to peer transfers, utility bill settlements, and physical merchant checkouts.
Concurrently, traditional desktop internet banking platforms demonstrated consistent development patterns during the analyzed timeframe. While transaction counts increased at a modest five percent rate, the underlying monetary value migrating through online portals surged by nineteen percent, highlighting a trend where corporate and retail users utilize standard internet banking setups for larger, high value capital transfers.
The state backed Raast Instant Payment System also sustained its significant upward growth trajectory during the third quarter. The real time network successfully executed seven hundred and forty two point one million distinct transactions, accounting for a total value of twenty three point three trillion rupees. Peer to peer transfers remained the primary driver within this platform, rising ten percent to hit six hundred and sixty four million payments valued at eighteen point nine trillion rupees. On the merchant side, peer to merchant interactions under the instant network experienced a notable jump, climbing to fifty five point nine million transactions compared to thirty six point three million recorded in the previous quarterly cycle.
Alongside these automated systems, brick and mortar touchpoints continued to handle heavy financial loads through a nationwide network of twenty thousand two hundred and thirty two physical bank branches and eight hundred and nineteen thousand three hundred and ninety seven authorized banking agents. These physical setups provide essential over the counter services including paper cash deposits, physical withdrawals, basic funds transfers, and manual utility bill collections. Traditional branches managed one hundred and twenty eight million high value transactions worth ninety nine point five trillion rupees, while distributed third party banking agents facilitated one hundred and fifty five million lower value everyday transactions totaling one point one trillion rupees, confirming a systematic transition toward a digitally integrated and inclusive financial ecosystem.
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