Raast: can we bank on it?

Over the past year, we have all been bored to death of listening to that tech dudebro in our circle telling us about the impending fintech revolution in Pakistan. You probably have heard it all: from the outlandish ones predicting a crypto future with no place for fiat to how startups will dethrone existing financial services providers once Raast, the central bank’s real-time micropayments gateway, truly takes/picks up pace. Earlier last week, we got one step closer to the latter as Prime Minister Imran Khan launched the second phase — instant peer-to-peer payments — of Raast. What that means is now you can transfer money to anyone through Raast. If you are wondering, how does that change anything since the same task can be done via 1LINK’s Interbank Funds Transfer (1IBFT)? For starters, the former is currently absolutely free “in spirit to promote financial inclusion in Pakistan”. Secondly, it’s much more convenient as you don’t need all those details such as a bank account number in a specific format to send the money. Their Raast ID — which can simply be a mobile number, email address or another moniker — is all that’s required.