By 2023, most Pakistani adults had a bank account, but many still could not access their money easily. The State Bank of Pakistan's new financial inclusion strategy tackles this through an interoperability layer that lets customers use any agent, from any provider, anywhere in the country.
The dilemma
By 2023, financial inclusion in Pakistan had reached 64% of adults, up from just 16% in 2015. The growth was largely driven by mobile-based products like the Asaan Mobile Account and services such as Easypaisa and JazzCash. But a structural problem remained. Agent networks, the local shops, kiosks, and franchises that act as the physical face of digital banking for people without nearby branches, were tied to specific banks or wallets. A customer with an HBL Konnect account could deposit or withdraw only at HBL Konnect agents. A JazzCash user needed a JazzCash agent. In rural areas, where the nearest agent of any particular provider might be several kilometres away, this fragmentation kept banking out of reach even for people who had accounts. The State Bank of Pakistan wanted to reach 75% financial inclusion by 2028, but doing so meant addressing the last-mile problem of physical access.
The regulatory gap
What was needed was an interoperability layer between agent networks. If a customer with any bank account could transact at any agent of any provider, the effective network for every customer would multiply overnight. But building that layer meant standardising how transactions were routed, cleared, and settled between competing providers, and doing so under regulatory supervision to protect customers and prevent risk. No individual bank or wallet had an incentive to build this on its own, because opening up their agent network to competitors' customers meant giving up an exclusive advantage.
The approach
The State Bank of Pakistan built agent interoperability into its National Financial Inclusion Strategy 2024-28, launched in January 2025. The strategy sets a target of 75% financial inclusion by 2028 and aims to narrow the gender gap in financial access from 34% to 25%. Agent interoperability is one of several delivery mechanisms.
To operate the interoperability layer, the SBP authorised Virtual Remittance Gateway, Pakistan's first company to hold both a Payment System Operator/Payment Service Provider licence and a Third Party Service Provider licence, to develop and run what is called the Interop Switch. The switch is the technical infrastructure that routes transactions between participating financial institutions, using cloud-native modular middleware for secure, end-to-end processing.
In January 2025, a landmark tripartite agreement was signed at the State Bank of Pakistan between VRG, HBL Konnect, and Easypaisa, the country's two largest branchless banking and mobile money providers. Under this agreement, a customer of any participating provider can perform deposits, withdrawals, bill payments, and other transactions at any participating agent, regardless of which bank or wallet the agent belongs to. The SBP has since encouraged other financial institutions to join, including microfinance banks such as ABHI Microfinance Bank.
Results achieved so far
The interoperability layer became operational in early 2025, following the January signing. VRG has reported that the underlying Asaan Mobile Account platform, which uses similar interoperability principles, reached ~15 million accounts and processed over 248.6 billion rupees in transactions by August 2026. VRG operates the switch on behalf of the SBP under its authorised operator mandate.
The immediate effect for customers is that any participating agent becomes a service point for any participating provider. For providers, it means access to a nationwide agent footprint without having to build one from scratch, particularly useful for microfinance banks and smaller institutions.
Two limits are worth noting. The system is still in its early phase, and its long-term effect on financial inclusion, particularly whether it materially closes the gender gap and reaches unserved rural populations, will only be clear over the coming years, as more institutions join and transaction volumes grow. Independent evaluation of the initiative's impact against the NFIS 2024-28 targets is not yet available.
The transferable lesson
The interesting design choice here is not the technology itself, but the layering of roles. The regulator sets the policy target (75% inclusion by 2028) and the participation rules. An authorised private operator (VRG), holding both the payment systems and third-party service provider licences that make cross-provider transactions legally possible, builds and operates the shared infrastructure. Individual banks and wallets compete on the customer relationship and the services built on top. Each layer does what it is best placed to do, and no single actor is asked to solve the whole problem.
The lesson for other countries with fragmented agent or distribution networks is that interoperability is more often a licensing and coordination problem than a technology problem. When a regulator designates a neutral operator, gives it clear legal authority, and mandates participation for major players, the technical layer follows. Where any of these three elements is missing, the interoperability layer tends not to arrive.
