Catapulting into a cashless society

More than 15 years ago, Pakistan’s financial services landscape saw a seismic shift with the introduction of branchless banking regulations. Around that time, the country had just over 16 million personal accounts with scheduled banks, and the overwhelming majority relied on informal networks to move money around. However, with growing mobile phone penetration, the traditional brick-and-mortar branches were no longer necessary. Any neighbourhood kiryana store could now be a financial services agent, a model that had been validated in other emerging markets. Though the impact could be seen from the get-go, it took some time before things snowballed and achieved a certain scale. In 2023, almost four billion transactions were processed through branchless banking, while the total number of registered accounts was 114.6m.