Pakistan's digital payments market has a major new international contender. EBANX, a global payments company founded in Brazil, announced on September 24 that it plans to begin operations in Pakistan in the first half of 2027, initially supporting the local digital wallets JazzCash and Easypaisa, followed by Raast, the country's national instant-payment system.
The announcement came at EBANX's annual Payments Summit, where the company set out its next phase of emerging-market expansion. For Pakistan's fast-growing online economy, the move is a clear signal that global payments players now see the country as a market they can no longer afford to ignore.
A Global Player Picks Pakistan
Founded in Brazil in 2012 out of the need to help global brands reach Brazilian consumers, EBANX has grown into a major cross-border payments infrastructure provider, offering more than 400 payment rails and over 200 payment methods while processing more than 4 million transactions a day. The company said it chose Pakistan as its next frontier because of strong merchant demand and the market's structural complexity, which it sees as a problem it is built to solve.
"Pakistan is a classic mobile-first market where smartphone ownership runs 20 to 40 percentage points ahead of card ownership. This makes local account-based payment methods, bank transfers, and digital wallets the key to winning market share," said Eduardo de Abreu, Chief Product Officer of EBANX and regional CEO of EBANX Singapore, in the announcement. "This payment fragmentation is challenging for global businesses, but bridging local payment infrastructure with global merchant needs is precisely what we have specialized in for over a decade."
Why Wallets Beat Cards Here
EBANX's launch plan reflects the reality of how Pakistanis actually pay. JazzCash and Easypaisa each report more than 50 million users, according to the company, making mobile wallets — not bank cards — the dominant way money moves in the country's digital economy. By supporting these wallets first, EBANX is positioning itself to serve the payment methods that ordinary Pakistanis already use every day.
The data behind the bet is striking. Pakistan's Gen Z population, those aged 15 to 30 in 2026, is experiencing a massive digital boom, with spending on video gaming, streaming and social media projected to grow 17 percent annually through 2036. Yet credit card ownership among this cohort sits below 10 percent. For global merchants selling into Pakistan, cards alone simply cannot capture this demand.
Raast and the Instant-Payment Backbone
The second phase of EBANX's launch — support for Raast — plugs the company into Pakistan's fastest-growing payments infrastructure. State Bank of Pakistan data cited by the company shows Raast transaction volumes nearly doubling in a year, from 371.2 million transactions in the third quarter of fiscal year 2025 to 742.1 million in the same quarter of fiscal year 2026.
That trajectory makes Raast an essential rail for any serious payments operation in Pakistan. As the national instant-payment system matures, international players that integrate with it early will be best placed to serve both Pakistani merchants selling abroad and global platforms selling into Pakistan.
What This Means for Pakistani E-Commerce
According to World Data Lab data analyzed by EBANX, Pakistan's e-commerce spending is projected to grow at an average annual rate of 22 percent from 2026 through 2030 — a pace that would more than triple the online market's size over the decade. A global processor connecting local wallets, bank transfers and Raast to international merchants could accelerate that growth by making cross-border checkout dramatically simpler.
For Pakistani businesses, the practical upside is access: local sellers will be able to accept payments from customers worldwide through a single integration, while international brands can finally sell into Pakistan without building their own fragmented web of local payment partnerships. The 2027 launch date gives the industry time to prepare — but the direction of travel is now unmistakable.
