Over 42 Million Pakistanis Use Plastic Money

The people of Pakistan are moving towards smart ways for payment solutions to avoid carrying cash everywhere they go. The numbers have crossed 42 million users.

Private banks have played a great role by providing them with easy payment services to store in the banks. Banks have been giving free debit cards to every customer when they open their account. If a card owner wants to increase the limit of withdrawal with each transaction, that would cost an annual fee.

There are multiple benefits customers get while using the cards for shopping in the malls and eating foods in restaurants, different discounts and offers they get from big brands. According to the report almost 49.3 million transactions worth of Rs. 560 billion in 2019.

The stats released by State Bank of Pakistan says that credit card users stand at around 1.6 million, ATM cards are 8.06 million, however, the debit cards are most as the stands at 23.9 million which is more than 50% of total card users. The rest are using social welfare cards such as Benazir Income Support Programme cards. These users are estimated to be 7.7 million respectively.

Banks are making the payment system convenient for customers by introducing new features, following the digitization of the world. They have introduced mobile banking which is more convenient for people.

Fawad Chaudhry, the Federal Minister for Science and Technology is fulfilling his promise by replacing debit & credit card with a mobile payment system. He has recently announced that Pakistan is going to develop its own E-Payment Gateway.