KARACHI: Central Depository Comp­any Ltd (CDC) has collaborated with the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) to enable investors to purchase units of mutual funds using the central bank’s Raast Payment Gateway.

The CDC has developed a framework where it acts as an aggregator and issues a Raast payment ID, enabling investors to digitally transfer funds using Raast to the respective asset management company (AMC) for the purchase of mutual fund units, a press release said on Wednesday.

SBP Deputy Governor Saleem Ullah said the launch of Raast payments facility for mutual funds will provide the much-needed convenience to investors and increase the investor base.

He said Raast will work as the pivot for digitisation of the country’s payment system. It’s been successfully processing over one million transactions every day since its launch in 2021, he said.

To date, more than 33m unique Raast IDs have been created, with over 267m transactions worth Rs5.4 trillion paid and settled through the payment gateway.

He added the Raast payment-to-merchant (P2M) feature has been recently launched, which will revolutionise the digital payment landscape in the country.

It allows the merchant and vendors to initiate request-to-pay for their customers, enabling the customers to make the payment by just accepting the request.

Published in Dawn, November 2nd, 2023