KARACHI: The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has announced that it will officially launch its upgraded payment and settlement system — PRISM+ — on Tuesday (today), allowing banks and financial institutions to transfer large payments in real time, schedule transactions, prioritise critical payments, track balances, and calculate fees automatically.

“PRISM+ will make Pakistan’s financial system faster, safer, and more modern. It will help participants move money more efficiently, manage liquidity better, handle securities transactions with ease, and reduce risks in the system,” the SBP said in a statement issued on Monday.

The new system has been developed in line with SBP’s Vision 2028, which aims to establish a modern, inclusive, and robust financial ecosystem.

PRISM+ is based on the ISO 20022 messaging standard, widely used in advanced financial systems across the world, and includes two key components: a faster Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system for large-value payments and a new Central Securities Depository (CSD) for managing government securities such as T-bills, PIBs and other instruments.

PRISM+ enables the real-time transfer of large payments, the option to schedule payments, priority-based payment processing where critical payments are settled first, live dashboards to monitor balances, pending payments and settlement status, and automatic calculation of fees and invoices. The CSD component will allow banks to manage government securities more easily by submitting bids in primary market auctions and receiving results in real time, conducting faster matching and settlement of trades in the secondary market, tracking and valuing pledged securities for collateral management, and settling transactions instantly during SBP’s open market operations.

According to the statement, the system provides greater transparency and security, with every transaction carrying a full audit trail, role-based access controls for authorised users, and real-time alerts to notify participants of any settlement issues.

Published in Dawn, August 19th, 2025