KarachiHalf of Pakistan’s 240 million adults remain unbanked.
Raast processes 88% of retail transactions, the State Bank of Pakistan said, but formal credit reaches just 2.4% of adults.
Bangladesh and Indonesia have pulled ahead on digital credit while Pakistan’s 5 licensed digital banks remain subscale.
Sources: Dawn
THE RAILS VS THE CREDIT
Payment rails and credit systems are different problems. Rails move money between people who already have it; credit creates new purchasing power. Pakistan built world-class rails (Raast clearing in seconds, near-zero fees) but its banks still won't lend to anyone without collateral or a salary slip.
WHY CREDIT IS HARD HERE
Pakistan's credit bureau (eCIB) only covers formal-sector borrowers. For the 70% of workers in the informal economy — street vendors, day laborers, smallholders — there is no salary record, no tax filing, no rent history. A lender has nothing to underwrite against, so the loan never gets made.
WHAT BANGLADESH DID DIFFERENTLY
bKash launched in 2011 as a mobile wallet, then layered nano-loans on top once it had years of transaction data on each user. The transaction history became the credit score. Pakistan's banks treat payment data and credit decisions as separate businesses; bKash treated them as the same product.
THE COLLATERAL TRAP
Pakistani banks prefer lending to the government (zero risk weight under Basel rules) over lending to small businesses. Roughly two-thirds of bank assets sit in government securities. The state borrows cheaply from the banks it owns, crowding out private credit. This is structural, not cyclical.
THE DIGITAL BANK BET
The State Bank licensed five digital banks in 2023, betting that a clean-sheet entrant — no branches, no legacy core, machine-learning underwriting — could profitably serve customers a traditional bank cannot. The same bet succeeded in Brazil (Nubank) and India (Jio Financial). It has not yet succeeded at scale anywhere in South Asia.
THE DEMOGRAPHIC CLOCK
Pakistan adds roughly 4 million people to working age every year. Without formal credit, that cohort cannot start businesses, buy productive equipment, or smooth income shocks. The fintech gap is not a banking problem — it is a growth-model problem with a deadline.