Facilitation of Merchants' Operations

PSP&OD Circular No 02 — July 25, 2025

The Presidents/Chief Executive Officers,

Banks/MFBs/EMIs (referred as REs)

Dear Sir/Madam,

Facilitation of Merchants’ Operations

1. To increase digital payment acceptance in the country, all REs shall provide digital payment acceptance solutions (like QR, Point of Sale - POS, soft POS, ecommerce gateways/Raast P2M Integration APIs etc.) to their customers providing in-store or online merchant services. For this purpose, merchant means any natural person or legal entity engaged in any business activity and collects payments against the sale of goods and services.
2. In this regard, REs shall ensure necessary technical integration with SBP’s Raast Instant Payment System by fulfilling the requirements for Merchant Service Providers (MSPs) as laid down in PSP&OD Circular No. 04 of 2023.
3. For this purpose, REs may also at their own discretion, enter into partnership with the authorized Payment System Operators (PSOs), Payment Service Providers (PSPs), Payment Schemes, Third parties offering merchant acquiring services, and / or other REs for provision of digital payment acceptance solutions to their merchants.
4. For account/wallet opening of merchants, all REs shall follow the Know Your Customer and Customer Due Diligence requirements as stipulated in ‘Consolidated Customer Onboarding Framework’ issued vide BPRD Circular No. 01 of 2025.
5. REs shall classify merchants into three categories and assign appropriate limits, as mentioned below:

1. Micro Merchants: merchants who have opened accounts/wallets (Asaan Account, EMI wallets & Regular accounts) as natural persons shall be categorized as ‘micro merchants’ with monthly transaction and account/wallet balance limit up to PKR 2,000,000/- (separately for debit and credit) and PKR 3,000,000/- respectively.
2. Small Merchants: merchants who have opened accounts/wallets as a non-registered entity (sole proprietor or unregistered partnership) shall be categorized as ‘small merchants’.
3. Registered Merchants: merchants registered/incorporated with the relevant authorities shall be treated as registered merchants’.

The REs shall determine the periodical transactions and account/wallet balance limits of all the merchants falling in the categories at (b) & (c), based on their sales turnover and risk profile.

6. At the time of opening accounts / wallets of persons engaged in any business activity, REs shall mandatorily deploy at least one digital payment acceptance solution such as QR code, Point of Sale device, e-commerce checkout / Raast P2M Integration APIs etc. Furthermore, in the case of existing merchants’ accounts/wallets, REs shall ensure deployment of at least one digital payment acceptance solution including Raast QR code by October 31, 2025.
7. A merchant account/wallet shall be reported to SBP as “digitally active” if at least one transaction has been conducted using digital touchpoint during the last month.
8. REs shall also comply with other instructions as given at Annexure A.
9. Please acknowledge receipt.

Enclosed:

• Annexure A

Yours sincerely,

Qazi Shoaib Ahmad
Director

Annexure A: Other Instructions for Merchant Facilitation A. Customer/Merchant Support In order to provide support to merchants and their customers, REs shall:
i. maintain a fully functional, round-the-clock Customer Support Service Centre that is able
to log and escalate issues/disputes, and address queries in a timely manner.
ii. ensure that merchants prominently display the contact details of the acquiring RE,
including but not limited to email, phone numbers, webpages, social media platforms etc. for logging any complaint related to merchant or the RE.
iii. maintain complete log of complaints along with their status to be reviewed by SBP as and
when required.
iv. conduct awareness sessions for merchants/customers for promoting usage of digital
channels at merchant level.
v. provide complete visibility to the merchants of payment transactions made by their
customers through digital means.
B. Dispute Resolution
i. REs shall develop comprehensive dispute resolution framework including but not limited
to roles and responsibilities of all the parties, liabilities, chargeback mechanism, and turnaround time, etc.
ii. REs shall comply with SBP’s applicable instructions on consumer protection and
grievances handling mechanism, issued from time to time.