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Safepay Raast is now generally available

Raast on Safepay is now generally available, bringing real-time bank transfers into your existing Safepay integration with reliable webhooks, reconciliation, and operational tooling.
Hamza Rizvi
Hamza Rizvi@hamzarizvi
Safepay Raast is now generally available
When payments work best, they feel effortless — almost invisible. A customer taps “Pay,” funds move instantly, and confirmation arrives before the moment has time to feel uncertain.
But real-world payments aren’t always that simple. Bank rails can introduce delays, integrations can be complex, and reliability across institutions can vary. For businesses operating in Pakistan, this has historically meant balancing speed, cost, and operational complexity when accepting bank payments.
Today, we’re excited to announce that Raast on Safepay is now generally available (GA).
Raast brings Pakistan’s instant payment infrastructure directly into the Safepay platform, enabling merchants and fintechs to accept real-time bank transfers with the same developer experience, reliability, and operational tooling they already expect from Safepay.
What started as early integrations with pilot customers has evolved into a production-grade payment rail — one that gives businesses the speed, control, and cost efficiency they need to scale.
You can explore the full integration guides in our documentation: https://safepay.mintlify.app

Real-time payments, built into your existing Safepay stack

Raast is Pakistan’s instant payment system operated by the State Bank of Pakistan. It enables immediate interbank transfers using aliases such as mobile numbers, IBANs, or Raast IDs.
With general availability, Raast becomes a first-class payment method inside Safepay, alongside cards and wallets.
Merchants can now:
  • Accept instant bank payments with real-time confirmation
  • Reduce payment costs compared to card rails
  • Improve conversion for customers who prefer bank transfers
  • Reconcile payments automatically through Safepay APIs and webhooks
All of this happens without requiring merchants to build or maintain direct bank integrations.
The goal is simple: one integration, multiple payment rails.

Designed for reliability and operational scale

Since the initial rollout, we’ve focused heavily on production readiness — especially around reliability, observability, and reconciliation.
Raast payments on Safepay now include:
Real-time payment state tracking
Payment lifecycle events are delivered through the same webhook system merchants already use for cards, making operational handling consistent across rails.
Automatic reconciliation and settlement visibility
Transactions flow through Safepay’s reporting and settlement systems, eliminating manual matching between bank statements and payment records.
Robust retry and failure handling
Edge cases such as delayed confirmations, bank timeouts, or customer interruptions are handled gracefully, reducing operational burden for merchants.
Together, these improvements deliver a payment experience that feels as predictable as cards — while retaining the cost and speed advantages of bank transfers.

A better option for high-trust and high-value payments

In many industries, customers prefer bank payments over cards — especially for:
  • Education and tuition payments
  • Travel and ticketing
  • E-commerce with higher ticket sizes
  • Government and utility payments
  • Marketplace payouts and collections
Raast provides a native solution for these use cases.
Because payments settle instantly and irrevocably, merchants benefit from:
  • Immediate payment confirmation
  • Lower fraud risk compared to cards
  • Improved cash-flow timing
  • Reduced chargeback exposure
For many businesses, Raast becomes not just an alternative payment method — but the primary rail.

Built for developers

One of Safepay’s core principles is that new payment methods should not require new complexity.
Raast follows the same API patterns as the rest of the platform:
  • Create a payment intent
  • Present payment instructions to the customer
  • Receive confirmation via webhook
  • Reconcile through dashboards and reports
If you’ve integrated Safepay before, you already know how to use Raast.
Full developer documentation is available here: https://safepay.mintlify.app

Observability and control from day one

General availability also introduces deeper visibility into Raast transactions.
Merchants can monitor:
  • Payment status transitions in real time
  • Settlement and reconciliation data
  • Failure and exception cases
  • Customer payment behavior patterns
This removes much of the operational guesswork that typically comes with bank transfer integrations.
When issues arise, it’s easy to determine what happened, why it happened, and what action — if any — is required.

A core building block for Pakistan’s digital payments future

With GA, Raast becomes a foundational part of Safepay’s payment infrastructure.
It enables:
  • Instant bank payments at national scale
  • Lower acceptance costs compared to cards
  • Real-time settlement visibility
  • Unified payment orchestration across rails
Most importantly, it does this without compromising Safepay’s core guarantees: reliability, security, and a clean developer experience.

Getting started

Raast is now available to Safepay merchants.
Integration is straightforward and can be enabled alongside your existing payment methods with minimal changes. You can deploy incrementally, test in staging environments, and roll out to production at your own pace.
To begin, visit our documentation: https://safepay.mintlify.app
If you need onboarding support or have specific volume requirements, our team is ready to help.
Instant payments are no longer the future of Pakistan — they’re here now. And with Safepay, they’re ready to use.