The Benazir Income Support Programme has signed formal agreements with 1LINK and a consortium of partner banks and digital financial services providers to operationalise an interoperable digital wallet payment system, enabling more than 10 million women beneficiaries across Pakistan to access their stipends through a significantly wider and more convenient network of payment points. The signing ceremony was held at BISP Headquarters in Islamabad and chaired by BISP Chairperson Senator Rubina Khalid, with senior representatives from the State Bank of Pakistan, 1LINK, Habib Bank Limited, Bank Alfalah, Bank of Punjab, HBL Microfinance Bank, Easypaisa, JazzCash, and the World Bank in attendance.
Under the new interoperable payment mechanism, BISP stipends will be credited directly into beneficiaries’ digital wallets, from which women can make withdrawals at the nearest retailer or agent of any participating bank across the country, regardless of which specific bank or digital financial services provider issued the payment. The removal of the restriction to a single designated payment point or provider represents a fundamental structural change in how BISP disbursements reach their recipients, addressing one of the most persistent barriers to effective social protection delivery in Pakistan: the geographic and logistical inaccessibility of payment collection for beneficiaries in rural and peri-urban areas. The new system will gradually become the primary channel for BISP disbursements nationwide as the rollout progresses.
Senator Rubina Khalid described the initiative as a transformative reform placing beneficiaries at the centre of the payment system, stating that the new arrangement will significantly improve the payment experience for millions of deserving women by providing greater convenience, accessibility, transparency, and choice. She noted that the reform directly responds to the vision of ensuring dignified and hassle-free payments for BISP beneficiaries, and that by expanding access to formal financial services, the programme is helping millions of women exercise greater financial autonomy and participate more actively in the economy. Officials attributed the longstanding challenges faced by beneficiaries, including long queues, unnecessary travel, overcrowding at payment sites, and limited payment access points, to the single-channel disbursement model that the new interoperable system is designed to replace.
Senator Rubina Khalid directed all partner institutions to ensure effective outreach and awareness campaigns for beneficiaries, timely activation of accounts and digital wallets, and comprehensive training of field staff and banking agents, emphasising that the success of the initiative would ultimately depend on efficient implementation at the grassroots level rather than on the technical agreements signed at headquarters. The participation of both conventional banks and digital financial services providers including Easypaisa and JazzCash gives the interoperable system a combined network reach that is substantially larger than any single provider’s agent footprint, making it realistic that even beneficiaries in less accessible areas will have a participating retailer within a manageable distance. For Pakistan’s social protection architecture, which has been progressively moving toward digital disbursement since the introduction of biometric-based payments under BISP more than a decade ago, the interoperable digital wallet system represents the most significant single step forward in that journey to date.
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