Govt to pay salaries, employee pensions via Raast instant payments system

The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has decided to digitize the payment process for salaries and payments of government employees through Raast instant payments system.

As reported by Mashable Pakistan, the central bank has also signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Controller General of Accounts Pakistan (CGAP). In the first phase of the digitalization process, the salaries and pensions of a group of Federal Government employees will be transferred via Raast.

As per the press release, “The payroll and pension-roll data will be shared from the CGAP’s system to SBP’s Raast through a highly secured interface, and payments to the beneficiaries’ accounts will be made instantly after validating the beneficiaries’ detail.”

The central bank said that to ensure that the payments are credited to the right person, Raast will verify “beneficiaries’ details with their banks on real time basis”.

The payment will only be transferred to the beneficiary’s account after the success of verification process, said SBP.

“After the pilot run, the facility will be rolled out to cover all the salaries, pension as well as supplier payments of the federal and provincial governments,” read the press release.

The digitalization process will ease the pension receiving process of the people as they don’t have to endure long waiting times at banks to cash their benefits cheques.

The central bank said that it is also working to “use the powerful capacities of Raast to include payments of social security nets such as the Ehsaas Program, BISP and other government entities”.

Raast is Pakistan’s first instant payment system that will enable instant payments process among individuals, businesses, and government entities. It provides a simple, fast, low-cost, interoperable and secure electronic payment platform for instant processing of high volume retail payments.

The digital system can also make payments to multiple beneficiaries at a time to cater to high volume government payments like salaries, pension and social security payments.