State Bank of Pakistan, with the support of DFID, has launched the Innovation Challenge Facility(ICF) for Digital Financial Services (DFS) to find and support innovative fin tech solutions to promote DFS in the country. The facility aims to offer grants to support financial service providers, financial technology providers and institutions with a digital solution to develop new, or expand existing financial products, services and delivery platforms, that will increase financial access for people living at the bottom of the income pyramid. The goal of ICF is to allow market players to develop innovative solutions for Pakistani consumers and enterprises for increasing access and usage of financial services. This will foster the creation of a client centric DFS system which encourages customers to not only open digital transaction accounts but use other financial instruments to drive adoption of DFS. Going forward, these solutions can play a major role to digitize payments, foster inclusive economic growth, improve value chains in industries, increase socio-economic well-being of masses and bring transparency in the economy.

Application Deadline	Proposals may be submitted at any point for consideration of the Evaluation Committee. The Facility is open till June 2019.
Deliverable	Complete proposal must be sent electronically at [email protected] Hard copies must be sent to: NFIS Secretariat, Agricultural Credit and Microfinance Department State Bank of Pakistan, I.I. Chundrigar Road, Karachi Karachi-74000 Tel: +92 21 33115584 Fax: +92 21 99221558
Eligible institutions	Banks, Microfinance Institutions, Government entities & Government departments/subsidiaries/boards, Insurance Companies, Non-banking financial service providers, PSPs, PSOs, BB Players, Fintechs, Telcos, software houses, and startups.

For further details, please view the complete General Guidelines on Digital Financial Services (DFS) – Innovation Challenge Facility: http://www.sbp.org.pk/Guidelines/ACMFD/2018/DFS-Guidelines.pdf