The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has announced the launch of the Pakistan Real-Time Interbank Settlement Mechanism Plus (PRISM+) under its Vision 2028, scheduled to go live on June 16, 2025. The system is designed to upgrade the National Digital Payments Infrastructure, enhancing the country’s payment and settlement ecosystem.
PRISM+ is built on the ISO 20022 financial messaging standard, which supports structured and data-rich financial communication. The new system promises improved transparency, interoperability, and automation in the payment process.Â
Key features include enhanced liquidity management, transaction queuing, prioritisation, and scheduling of future payments. It also offers customizable dashboards, alerts, query tools, and downloadable settlement statements, providing real-time monitoring and approval of transactions via a web-based module.
The system also includes a Central Securities Depository (CSD) platform to facilitate money market operations, such as government securities auctions, secondary market transactions, collateral management, and open market operations.
To streamline settlement processes, PRISM+ will use Transitory Accounts, where 80% of balances from Participants’ Current Accounts at SBP BSC (Karachi) will be transferred at the start of each business day.Â
Participants will be able to transfer funds between their Current and Transitory Accounts throughout the day and allocate funds for ancillary clearings like Raast, NIFT, and 1Link.
SBP has also recommended that participants ensure operational readiness for Straight-Through Processing (STP) via PRISM+ through APIs or file adapters. The system will support both MT and the new MX (ISO 20022 XML) formats until September 30, 2025. After this date, the MT/MX converter will be discontinued. Participants are also advised to replace the RTGS Over-the-Counter (OTC) facility with Raast OTC by September 30, 2025, for all branch-initiated customer transactions.
SBP has urged financial institutions to review their operational processes to ensure the seamless integration of PRISM+ and retain historical transaction data for future reference.
