Islamabad (GNP): Minister of State for Finance Bilal Azhar Kayani chaired a high-level building transparent, review session at the Finance Division to prepare for the upcoming review of the Prime Minister’s Cashless Initiative.
The meeting brought together senior officials from the Ministry of Finance, the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), NADRA, the Capital Development Authority (CDA), the Ministry of IT & Telecommunication, and representatives from the private sector. The minister assessed progress on the Prime Minister’s earlier directives and laid out priorities aimed at accelerating Pakistan’s shift toward digital finance.
A key focus of the meeting was reviewing the past year’s progress and beginning the process of setting annual performance targets for the national Cashless Dashboard for the current fiscal year, alongside introducing new analytical metrics to strengthen real-time monitoring and improve data transparency.
Participants evaluated growth over the past year in active digital merchants, overall digital transaction volumes, and the number of digital banking users, and reviewed progress on digitizing government payments across state-owned enterprises and autonomous bodies — reaffirming the goal of fully digitizing vendor payments, employee salaries and pension disbursements.
The committee also discussed approaches to expand merchant adoption of digital payments nationwide and proposed setting up a centralized merchant database to improve real-time visibility into transactions. Members further emphasized the need to simplify the user experience so citizens can pay digitally at every point of interaction.
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Referencing Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s vision, Minister Kayani reaffirmed the government’s commitment to building a transparent, well-documented and inclusive economy, adding that regular progress reviews would continue to ensure swift implementation and maximum convenience for the public.
Sohail Majeed is a Special Correspondent at The Diplomatic Insight. He has twelve plus years of experience in journalism & reporting. He covers International Affairs, Diplomacy, UN, Sports, Climate Change, Economy, Technology, and Health.
