Pakistan’s digital payments story is largely settled its digital credit story is not, and that’s where regulators are now turning their attention. Speaking as chief guest at the fourth Pakistan Fintech Forum (PFF IV) in Karachi, State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) Deputy Governor Muhammad Ali Khan said the central bank is working to build a trusted and accountable digital financial ecosystem, urging banks and fintech companies to move faster on expanding digital credit while strengthening regulation, accountability, and consumer trust.
Table of Contents
Key Takeaways
- Who spoke: SBP Deputy Governor Muhammad Ali Khan, as chief guest
- Event: Pakistan Fintech Forum IV (PFF IV), hosted by the Pakistan Fintech Network (PFN) in Karachi
- Event theme: “Building the Financial Future: Scale, Trust & Inclusion”
- Core message: SBP wants to expand digital access while strengthening regulation, accountability, and trust not treat access and oversight as competing goals
- Specific call to action: Banks and fintechs urged to accelerate expansion of digital credit
- Key stat cited at the forum: 92% of all payments in Pakistan are now processed digitally
- Who else was on stage: Senior officials from the Pakistan Digital Authority (PDA), the Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (PVARA), and Raast Payments Pakistan
- Topics covered: Digital banking, credit access, digital payments, financial inclusion, regulation, digital infrastructure, and emerging technologies
What the Deputy Governor Actually Said
Addressing the forum, Muhammad Ali Khan framed SBP’s priorities in a specific, quotable way: “our focus is not only on expanding digital access, but on building trust, strengthening regulation and accountability, and enabling digital financial services to translate into meaningful economic activity.” That framing is notable for what it deliberately avoids treating “more access” and “more oversight” as being in tension with each other. Instead, Khan positioned trust and regulation as the precondition for access to translate into real economic activity, rather than a constraint on growth.
Reporting on the event specifically highlighted SBP’s call for banks and fintech companies to quickly expand digital credit a notably direct instruction, suggesting the regulator sees credit access, not payments infrastructure, as the area where Pakistan’s digital finance sector is currently falling short of its potential.
Why Digital Credit Is the New Focus
The reasoning behind this shift in emphasis is fairly direct: Pakistan has already largely solved digital payments. As cited at the forum itself, 92% of all payments in Pakistan are now processed digitally a figure consistent with SBP’s own Q3 FY26 Payment Systems Quarterly Review, which found digital channels handling the overwhelming majority of the country’s retail transaction volume.
That achievement changes what the next phase of Pakistan’s digital finance agenda needs to look like. As one industry analysis of the forum put it, the fact that basic digital adoption has happened fast means the next challenge is “moving beyond payments into digital credit and investment products so that more people can access financial services beyond just sending and receiving money.” In other words: getting money to move digitally was the first, largely completed phase. Getting people digital access to credit loans, financing, investment products is the harder, still-unfinished next phase.
Four Regulators, One Stage
One of the more structurally significant aspects of PFF IV wasn’t just what was said, but who was in the room together. The forum brought senior officials from SBP, the Pakistan Digital Authority (PDA), the Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (PVARA), and Raast Payments Pakistan onto the same stage representing conventional banking regulation, digital governance, virtual asset oversight, and payments infrastructure, respectively.
This matters because it directly addresses a coordination challenge that has previously been flagged as a structural weakness in Pakistan’s fintech landscape: regulatory fragmentation across multiple overlapping bodies. Having SBP, PDA, PVARA, and Raast represented together at a single industry forum discussing digital banking, credit access, and emerging technologies as shared priorities rather than siloed mandates suggests at least some deliberate effort toward coordinated messaging, even if formal regulatory integration remains a separate, longer-term question.
What Was Discussed
Beyond the headline remarks, the forum’s sessions covered a genuinely broad cross-section of Pakistan’s digital finance agenda: digital banking, access to credit, digital payments, financial inclusion, regulation, digital infrastructure, and emerging technologies. This breadth reflects the event’s stated theme “Building the Financial Future: Scale, Trust & Inclusion” treating scale, trust, and inclusion not as three separate initiatives, but as interdependent goals that need to advance together.
Why This Matters
- It signals a deliberate pivot from payments to credit as Pakistan’s next digital finance frontier. With payments digitization largely achieved, SBP’s explicit call to “quickly expand digital credit” gives banks and fintechs a clear, near-term regulatory expectation to work toward.
- It reframes trust and regulation as enablers, not obstacles. Khan’s specific language that digital services should “translate into meaningful economic activity” sets a bar beyond simple usage statistics, implicitly acknowledging that transaction volume alone doesn’t guarantee genuine economic benefit if trust and credit access remain weak.
- It reflects continued institutional coordination among Pakistan’s fragmented fintech regulators. Bringing SBP, PDA, PVARA, and Raast together publicly is a modest but meaningful step toward the kind of cross-regulator coordination that’s been identified as a persistent structural challenge for Pakistani fintech.
- It builds directly on Pakistan’s record digital payments adoption. The 92% digital payments figure cited at the forum is the same benchmark covered in SBP’s Q3 FY26 data this event essentially marks the moment where that achievement was explicitly used to justify shifting policy attention toward the next challenge: credit.
Frequently Asked Questions
What did SBP’s Deputy Governor say about Pakistan’s digital financial ecosystem?
Muhammad Ali Khan said SBP is working to build a trusted and accountable digital financial ecosystem, focusing not just on expanding digital access but also on strengthening regulation, accountability, and consumer trust.
What event was this said at?
The fourth Pakistan Fintech Forum (PFF IV), hosted by the Pakistan Fintech Network in Karachi, under the theme “Building the Financial Future: Scale, Trust & Inclusion.”
What specific action did SBP call for?
It urged banks and fintech companies to accelerate the expansion of digital credit.
What percentage of payments in Pakistan are now digital?
92%, a figure cited at the forum and consistent with SBP’s own Q3 FY26 Payment Systems Quarterly Review data.
Which other regulators were involved in the forum?
The Pakistan Digital Authority (PDA), the Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (PVARA), and Raast Payments Pakistan all had senior officials present alongside SBP.
Why is the focus shifting from payments to credit?
Because digital payments adoption in Pakistan is already very high, the next major challenge for financial inclusion is expanding digital access to credit and investment products, not just payment and transfer capabilities.
