Despite anecdotal complaints about poor user experience in Pakistan's financial services particularly regarding onboarding and dispute resolution the data reveals a powerful, uninterrupted surge in the adoption of digital platforms. The uptake is so strong that it is effectively undeterred by customer dissatisfaction.
Digital Growth: Records and Throughput
As of FY25, Pakistan boasts over 123 million registered digital platform users (across mobile, internet, and branchless wallets), a number slightly exceeding half of all registered deposit-taking accounts nationwide. This represents a significant turnaround for a market that once lagged in global rankings.
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Mobile Banking Dominance: Mobile banking is the primary driver of high-value digital transactions, processing a throughput of Rs 83.2 trillion in FY25, an 80% increase year-over-year. More importantly, its 1.8 billion transactions volume surpassed ATMs, internet banking, point-of-sale (POS), and e-commerce combined.
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Highest Volume Driver: Branchless wallets lead in transaction volume, recording 4.2 billion transactions, though with a smaller total worth of Rs14.2 trillion.
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Internet Banking: This remains a strong second in throughput, jumping 62% to Rs38.1 trillion, with volumes rising 24% to 276.5 million.
POS and the E-Commerce Lag
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Point-of-Sale (POS) Surge: Driven by aggressive new entrants and competition, POS finally crossed the Rs 2 trillion benchmark, closing FY25 at Rs 2.1 trillion (up 37% YoY). Infrastructure also expanded, with payment cards hitting 59.3 million and terminals reaching nearly 196,000.
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E-commerce Disappointment: Card-based e-commerce remains a weak segment. Transactions reached 51.8 million and throughput grew to Rs 249.7 billion in FY25, despite infrastructure expansion. However, this measure is limited, as the majority of high-volume online merchant transactions occur via branchless wallets, which processed 683.9 million transactions worth Rs 662.7 billion in the same year.
Context is Key: Digitisation Percentage
While the absolute growth figures are impressive, the article argues they lack context unless compared to peer markets or the overall retail payment mix. To address this, Data Darbar calculates a "retail digitisation percentage" (excluding ATMs and, for now, branchless banking due to data inconsistency).
The analysis reveals two critical findings:
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High Volume Digitisation: 60.8% of all retail scheduled banking transaction volumes were conducted through digital channels in FY25, up from 52.5%.
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Breakout Throughput Digitisation: The pace of digitisation in throughput (value) was historically slower, but FY25 marked a breakout change. A record 21.7% of the retail throughput through scheduled banks was digital, witnessing an 8.21 percentage point increase over the previous year.
The future challenge is to capitalize on this momentum and accelerate it into the business-to-business (B2B) payment universe, which will require sustained effort not only from the central bank but also from tax authorities.
