{"id":566578,"date":"2026-09-11T00:09:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T19:09:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leadpakistan.com.pk\/news\/?p=566578"},"modified":"2026-09-11T00:09:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T19:09:11","slug":"active-digital-payment-merchants-rise-to-2-03-mln-kiyani","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leadpakistan.com.pk\/news\/active-digital-payment-merchants-rise-to-2-03-mln-kiyani\/","title":{"rendered":"Active digital payment merchants rise to 2.03 mln: Kiyani"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>ISLAMABAD: The active merchants using digital payments in Pakistan have surged to 2.03 million from just 0.5 million, already exceeding the government\u2019s target of 2 million by June 2026, State Minister for Finance Bilal Azhar Kiyani said here Thursday. Talking to high-level delegation of Gates Foundation, the state minister attributed the rapid growth to measures aimed at encouraging digital payment adoption, including a PKR 3.5 billion government subsidy for Raast QR, which he said has helped drive wider adoption and behavioural change. The delegation comprising Dr Anita Zaidi, President of the Gender Equality Division and Dr Kalpana Kochhar, Interim President of the Global Policy &#038; Advocacy Division and other senior officials, called on minister to review progress on Pakistan\u2019s digital transformation agenda. APP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ISLAMABAD: The active merchants using digital payments in Pakistan have surged to 2.03 million from just 0.5 million, already exceeding the government\u2019s target of 2 million by June 2026, State Minister for Finance Bilal Azhar Kiyani said here Thursday. Talking to high-level delegation of Gates Foundation, the state minister attributed the rapid growth to measures [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-566578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-top-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Active digital payment merchants rise to 2.03 mln: Kiyani<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/leadpakistan.com.pk\/news\/active-digital-payment-merchants-rise-to-2-03-mln-kiyani\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Active digital payment merchants rise to 2.03 mln: Kiyani\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"ISLAMABAD: The active merchants using digital payments in Pakistan have surged to 2.03 million from just 0.5 million, already exceeding the government\u2019s target of 2 million by June 2026, State Minister for Finance Bilal Azhar Kiyani said here Thursday. 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