MOU for digitising govt payments

KARACHI:

The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has collaborated with the Controller General of Accounts Pakistan (CGAP) to digitise federal government payments through Raast. According to a statement issued by the State Bank, a memorandum of understanding was signed between the two entities on Monday. In the pilot phase, salaries and pensions of a group of federal government employees would be paid through Raast. The payroll and pension-roll data will be shared from CGAP’s system to Raast through a highly secured interface and payments to the beneficiaries’ accounts will be made instantly after validating the beneficiaries’ details. To ensure that payments are only credited in the intended beneficiary’s account, Raast verifies the beneficiaries’ details with their banks on a real-time basis before crediting the payment in the beneficiary’s account. After the pilot run, the facility will be rolled out to cover all the salaries, pension as well as supplier payments of the federal and provincial governments.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 30^th, 2021.

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