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The National Information Technology Board (NITB) wants citizens to pay utility bills, taxes and service fees on government platforms through one digital payment system. The plan, set out in a request for proposals for online payment integration, would cover licences, certificates and applications as well.
Under the NITB digital payment integration plan, a single provider would connect the government’s platforms to several payment channels at once.
Channels the system must support
The proposed system must handle debit and credit cards, QR-based payments, interbank funds transfers (IBFT), branchless banking agents and the Request to Pay (RTP) facility, alongside the Raast payment system.
Raast is Pakistan’s instant payment system run by the State Bank of Pakistan. Request to Pay lets a payee send a payment request that the payer approves, which suits bills and fees. IBFT moves money between accounts at different banks.
What the NITB requires from the provider
The tender sets out requirements in four areas.
| Area | Requirement |
|---|---|
| Payments | Real-time confirmation, automated reconciliation, secure processing |
| Settlement | Funds go to NITB-identified accounts, not held in provider-owned settlement accounts |
| Operations | Reporting dashboards, refunds, dispute and chargeback handling, 24/7 availability, technical support, staff training |
| Security | Multi-factor authentication, encryption, fraud detection, monitoring for anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing compliance, data hosted in Pakistan, periodic vulnerability assessments and penetration testing |
The settlement rule is worth noting. A chargeback is a reversal of a card payment after a dispute. By requiring payments to land in accounts the NITB identifies, the board is trying to keep public money out of private float, the money a provider holds between collecting and passing on funds.
Who can bid
The NITB has invited scheduled banks and fintech companies registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) and licensed by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP).
Bidders need at least five years of experience in online payment integration or digital banking solutions and integrations with at least five major clients. They must hold valid PCI-DSS certification, which covers card data security, and ISO 27001 or an equivalent information security certification. They must also have active or committed integration with Raast.
How bids will be judged
The procurement is a single-stage, two-envelope process. Financial proposals are opened only for bidders that clear the technical stage.
At the financial stage, the evaluation will favour lower transaction charges for citizens and a higher revenue share for the NITB.
What the tender does not say
The tender document gives no target number of users, no projected transaction volumes and no implementation timeline. It also does not say which services will move first or how many government platforms are covered.
Those gaps make it hard to judge the scale of the project or how soon citizens would see a change.
Why this fits a wider push
The tender arrives while the government is pushing digital payments more broadly. At a recent Finance Division meeting on the Prime Minister’s Cashless Pakistan initiative, officials said merchant acceptance of electronic payments grew fourfold last fiscal year and set out to tighten how active users and merchants are counted.
For citizens, the practical change would be paying a government fee on one site without a trip to a bank branch or a challan. The tender sets up the plumbing for that and says nothing yet about when it arrives.
Bottom Line
The evaluation criteria contain a tension. The NITB wants lower charges for citizens and a higher revenue share for itself, and both come from the same transaction. A provider that gives the board a larger cut has less room to keep citizen charges low.
How the two are weighed matters. If the revenue share carries more weight, charges could rise, or the provider could look for margin elsewhere. If citizen charges lead, the NITB’s share shrinks. The tender gives no weighting, so bidders and the public cannot tell which way it leans.
The sound parts are technical: direct settlement, local data hosting, security testing and Raast integration. The open parts are commercial and practical. Publishing the evaluation weights, the services in the first phase and a rollout date would show whether this is a payment system for citizens or a revenue line for the board.
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