The Federal Government, under the Prime Minister’s Cashless Economy initiative, has approved the targeted support for the SBP Regulated Entities (REs) for promoting onboarding of merchants on Raast and enabling them to digitally receive payments through Raast QR Code.

2.     The Government has allocated a subsidy of PKR 3.5 billion for Raast P2M QR Code based transactions to be conducted during the period from September 1, 2025, to June 30, 2026. The subsidy shall be paid at the rate of 0.5% of the value of each Raast P2M QR Code based transaction or PKR 100, whichever is lower. The subsidy is to be shared equally between the Merchant's Fl and Customer's Fl (acquiring and issuing Financial Institutions). The REs in addition to the subsidy may charge up to 0.25% of the transaction value for on boarding and servicing the merchants.

3.     The subsidy payments shall be made to REs on a quarterly basis. In case the total subsidy amount exceeds the annual ceiling of PKR 3.5 billion, the subsidy rate will be revised downward to ensure that each RE gets the subsidy at an equal rate within the budget ceiling. The detailed mechanism for subsidy disbursement is placed at Annexure – A .

4.     All SBP REs (Raast Merchant’s FI and Customer’s FI) are advised to ensure compliance with the prescribed process and maintain complete records for verification and audit purposes.


Enclosures:

1) Annexure-A: Process for the disbursement of subsidy