SBP’s PRISM+ Launch: The End of Payment Problems in Pakistan?

The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has announced the launch of the PRISM+ payment system, set to go live on June 16, 2025, under its Vision 2028 initiative aimed at modernizing the national digital payments infrastructure.

The PRISM+ payment system is based on the ISO 20022 financial messaging standard, designed to enable structured, transparent, and data-rich financial communications. This upgrade will enhance interoperability and automation across Pakistan’s payment and settlement ecosystem.

Key features of PRISM+ include advanced liquidity management tools, transaction queuing and prioritization, and the ability to schedule future-dated payments. A web-based interface will allow real-time initiation, monitoring, and approval of transactions through customizable dashboards, alerts, and settlement statements.

Additionally, PRISM+ incorporates a Central Securities Depository (CSD) platform to support money market operations such as government securities auctions, secondary market trading, collateral management, and open market operations.

To streamline settlements, the system will use Transitory Accounts. Each business day, 80% of participant banks’ balances from their Current Accounts with SBP BSC (Karachi) will automatically move to these accounts. Participants can transfer funds between Current and Transitory Accounts during business hours and allocate liquidity for ancillary services such as Raast, NIFT, and 1Link.

Participants must also prepare for Straight-Through Processing (STP) via PRISM+ using APIs or file adapters. To ease the transition to ISO 20022 XML (MX) messaging, both MT and MX formats will be supported until September 30, 2025, after which the MT/MX converter will be discontinued.

The SBP has further directed all financial institutions to replace the current RTGS Over-the-Counter (OTC) facility with Raast OTC for branch-based customer transactions by the end of September 2025.

Lastly, banks are instructed to align their systems for full integration, ensure historical transaction data retention from PRISM+, and guarantee data accessibility when needed.