{"id":673362,"date":"2026-09-05T04:28:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T04:28:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/673362\/"},"modified":"2026-09-05T04:28:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T04:28:13","slug":"jazzcash-onboards-1-7m-merchants-onto-raast-business-finance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/673362\/","title":{"rendered":"JazzCash onboards 1.7m merchants onto Raast – Business & Finance"},"content":{"rendered":"

KARACHI: JazzCash has emerged as a key player in the government\u2019s drive to document Pakistan\u2019s informal economy, onboarding 1.7 million merchants onto the State Bank of Pakistan\u2019s Raast interoperable QR network and targeting 2 million digital merchants by the end of 2026.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Overall, Pakistan has more than 5 million micro, small and medium enterprises, but fewer than a quarter have any digital footprint at all.<\/p>\n

Aamir Aftab, Chief Product Officer at JazzCash informed that the network has grown from around 900,000 merchants in January to 1.7 million by July, nearly doubling in six months, and now moves close to PKR 150 billion a month on average in QR payments.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of these merchants have never had a documented history of their own business before and that\u2019s often the first step toward things like formal credit\u201d, he added.<\/p>\n

Fewer than 200,000 card terminals exist nationwide, concentrated among larger, organized retailers. JazzCash\u2019s QR network, now eight times that size, lets kiryana stores, beauty salons and home-based cooks start accepting digital payments without ever needing a terminal.<\/p>\n

As per SBP\u2019s financial statements, the cost of printing currency is surged to PKR 31.3 billion, up from PKR 13 billion in 2020, on top of the tax revenue lost to business activity that goes undocumented.<\/p>\n

Merchants scan onto the network through the JazzCash Business App, submitting identity and biometric checks digitally, with field staff assisting merchants who need more handholding to trust the process. Aftab said that combination, self-service for merchants comfortable going digital alone and in-person support for those who aren\u2019t, has been central to the pace of onboarding.<\/p>\n

Aftab said the bigger challenge now is sustaining merchant onboarding beyond major cities, where higher acquisition costs and lower levels of digital confidence are slowing the pace of adoption.<\/p>\n

JazzCash is also working with the Ministry of Finance to let users invest directly in government treasury bills through the app, Aftab said, part of a wider plan to build savings, credit and now investment products on top of the same wallet base established for payments.<\/p>\n

He said that JazzCash Bazar, a marketplace still under development with Huawei, aims to bridge that gap by letting merchants open a digital storefront without needing a website of their own.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe end goal isn\u2019t just payments, it\u2019s giving millions of small businesses a financial record for the first time, one that can eventually get them access to credit, insurance, investment opportunities,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Copyright Business Recorder, 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KARACHI: JazzCash has emerged as a key player in the government\u2019s drive to document Pakistan\u2019s informal economy, onboarding…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":673363,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[257],"tags":[284606,8490,18,19,17,284607,284605,64286,279,22860,124682,82],"class_list":["post-673362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mobile","tag-aamir-aftab","tag-digital-payments","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-jazzcash","tag-jazzcash-bazar","tag-ministry-of-finance","tag-mobile","tag-sbp","tag-state-bank-of-pakistan","tag-technology"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117216549470194626","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=673362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673362\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/673363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=673362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=673362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=673362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}