Pakistan has joined 50-in-5, a global campaign that aims to accelerate safe and inclusive digital public infrastructure (DPI), as announced by Pakistan Digital Authority. The initiative helps 50 countries to design, launch and scale DPI within five years, and it improves the path that each country takes through cooperation and knowledge sharing. Pakistan joins more than 40 countries that are already part of the campaign, which include Estonia, Singapore, Brazil and Norway. The membership places the country alongside governments that have built digital systems for identity, payments and data exchange, and it gives Pakistan a place in a network where those governments compare what has worked and what has not.
According to the authority, Pakistan brings strong foundations to the campaign. These include the national identity system of NADRA, the Raast instant payments system of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), and the Digital Nation Pakistan Act, 2025. The Act created the Pakistan Digital Authority to lead the National Digital Masterplan and to develop WASL, the National Data Exchange Layer, in collaboration with NADRA and under the guidance of the Ministry of IT and Telecommunication Pakistan. Together, identity, payments and data exchange are the main layers of digital public infrastructure, so the contribution of Pakistan covers the central parts of what the campaign seeks to promote.
Through 50-in-5, Pakistan will connect these systems into one interoperable ecosystem, and it will share its experience with peer countries. The campaign is country led, and it is supported by Co-Develop, the Digital Public Goods Alliance, the Gates Foundation, the Inter-American Development Bank, UNDP and UNICEF. This group of partners provides funding, technical guidance and a link with other governments, and it allows countries that are at different stages of building DPI to receive support that suits their own conditions and needs.
Pakistan will now take part in the peer learning activities of the campaign. It will bring its own experience to the table and draw on what other countries have already built, which means that the membership works in both directions, with Pakistan offering lessons from NADRA, Raast and WASL while learning from the experience of members such as Estonia, Singapore, Brazil and Norway. The announcement from the authority presents the step as part of its work on the National Digital Masterplan, and it sets out the aim of joining the existing systems of the country into a single ecosystem that other countries can learn from within the five year period of the campaign.
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