Staff Reporter Islamabad
State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) and the Controller General of Accounts Pakistan (CGAP) Monday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for digitizing federal government payments through RAAST- Pakistan’s First Instant Payment System, launched in January 2021 by SBP.
Raast is a flagship initiative of SBP, which provides simple, fast, low-cost, interoperable and secure electronic payment platform for instant processing of high volume retail payments, said a press release issued here.
Raast also has the ability to make payments to multiple beneficiaries at a time in order to cater high volume government payments like salaries, pension and social security payments.
In the pilot phase, the salaries and pensions of a group of Federal Government employees will be paid through Raast.
The payroll and pension-roll data will be shared from CGA system to SBP’s Raast through a highly secured interface, and payments to the beneficiaries’ accounts will be made instantly after validating the beneficiaries’ detail.
