Pakistan has 56.4 million cards in circulation. Take a peek at your wallet and you will most likely find more than one payment card, thus the number of cards doesn’t equate to the number of card holders.

Debit cards take the lion’s share at 88 per cent and are mostly used to withdraw cash from ATMS. In the second quarter of FY25, 263m transactions were conducted at ATMs. The currency in circulation at the end of June 2024 was Rs9.1 trillion, according to the State Bank of Pakistan. Even with a debit card, the main purpose is access to cash, rather than digital payments.

Around 99m point of sales trasactions were conducted through debit cards and 28m at e-commerce stores, indicating that when it comes to ordering online, people still prefer cash on delivery. However, trends are changing towards digitisation with the number of retail digital payments surpassing two billion for the first time.

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, March 31st, 2025