Page 7 - CMA Journal (July-August 2025)

Exclusive Interview

EXCLUSIVE

INTERVIEW

Mr. Jameel Ahmad

Governor
State Bank of Pakistan (SBP)

“ instant, free, and easy digital payments. Since its launch, Raast has seen rapid

SBP introduced Raast as a next-generation Financial Market Infrastructure to enable

adoption—with over 45 million unique users registering Raast IDs, representing

approximately 32% of Pakistan’s adult population, and more than 1 million merchants

adopting Raast IDs. This remarkable uptake has significantly expanded the reach of digital

payments for both individuals and businesses “

ICMA: What is SBP’s long-term vision for advancing depository for government securities trading and
digital financial services in Pakistan? settlement. For retail payments, SBP has also launched its
instant payment system called Raast. Both PRISM+ and
Governor SBP: The State Bank of Pakistan envisions a
Raast are built on the ISO 20022 standard, which is now
future for our financial system where digital financial
being referred to as the future language of payments.
services drive inclusive and sustainable economic
With the launch of PRISM+ for wholesale and Raast for
development in the country. Our goal is to foster a
instant retail payments, SBP’s digital payments
digitally connected and fully interoperable financial
processing infrastructure is now geared for innovation
ecosystem—one where individuals, businesses, and
and universal digitization of the economy.
institutions can transact with trust, ease, and efficiency.
We are transforming our financial services by enabling SBP has also continuously updated our regulatory
open banking, building interoperable platforms, and framework to enable new fintechs as part of our financial
promoting cost-efficient merchant solutions to support ecosystem. On one hand, regulations for Electronic
entrepreneurship across the country. Money Institutions, payment system operators and
service providers, and digital banks allow
This transformation is driven by a robust,
technology-enabled entities to introduce innovative,
state-of-the-art, and fully interoperable digital payments
tech-driven products that are accelerating the shift
infrastructure. Pakistan recently launched its high-value
toward a digital economy and play a key role in providing
processing core real-time gross settlement system called digital financial services.

PRISM+. PRISM+ has a fully integrated central securities
ICMA’s Chartered Management Accountant, Jul-Aug 2025 5