Karachi March 18 2023: In order to facilitate the acceptance of card-based payments under “Improving Payment Card Acceptance Infrastructure in Pakistan” State Bank of Pakistan significantly reduce the charges on Interchange Reimbursement Fee and Point of Sale transactions.
Interchange Reimbursement Fee (IRF) for cards issued in Pakistan used on domestic POS terminals shall be as follows:
a) for debit and prepaid cards – not exceeding 0.2%
b) for credit cards – not exceeding 0.7%
Lower range of Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) i.e. 1.5% is abolished in terms of the clause 2(i) of PSD Circular No. 01 of 2020.
All e-commerce/online payment acquirers operating in Pakistan shall enable acceptance of Domestic Payment Scheme (DPS) card for card-not-present (CNP) transactions on their respective payment gateways by June 30, 2023.