Advantages and key features of MPG
Digital payments only account for 0.2% of Pakistan’s 100 billion transactions today, whereas the share of digital transactions* in peer countries ranges from 1.5% to 7%. This can be primarily be attributed to the challenges within the payment ecosystem, which include:
- Limited interoperability: Financial institutions (i.e. the providers of digital payment services) have difficulty connecting to each other due to a lack of necessary central infrastructure
- High cost of digital payments to the end user: End users are charged high fees for transferring money digitally, making digital payments inaccessible for a large portion of the population
- Poor user experience: End users must go through a complex process to make digital payments and there are no digital modes of payment that are widely accepted by merchants
- Lack of security: Currently available digital payment types and infrastructure do not offer sufficient/adequate data protection and authentication
The core of MPG’s mission is to transform the reach, security, speed, quality of, and trust in digital payments available to individuals and institutions in Pakistan. It was designed with the abovementioned challenges in mind and will introduce multiple enhancements to the digital payments ecosystem in Pakistan, including:
- Instantaneous payments: Near real-time digital payments across individuals, merchants, businesses, and government entities
- Low-to-no transaction costs for end users: MPG is designed to operate at a cost recovery model in order to make digital payments affordable to end users of all socio-economic backgrounds
- Full sector-wide interoperability: MPG will allow all financial institutions to seamlessly connect to each other via a single link to the central infrastructure, making digital payments accessible across any channel to customers of any financial institution
- Customer-centric innovative products/services: MPG will be built on cutting-edge technological standards, allowing financial institutions to develop innovative and user-friendly digital payment products and services (e.g. payment through phone number/email)
- Reliability and enhanced security: MPG will introduce more secure payment types, ensure that each transaction is authorized by the payor, and offer enhanced data protection and fraud detection services
The key features that enable MPG to offer these advantages include:
- Advanced payment types including push-based payments, bulk payments, and request to pay
- Alias services (e.g. email/phone number)
- API gateway for simpler integration
- Transaction analytics for proactive fraud management
- ISO20022 message formats
*As a share of total annual transactions