Digital payments upgradation: SBP to launch ‘PRISM+'
KARACHI: The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), under its Vision 2028, has announced the launch of the Pakistan Real-Time Interbank Settlement Mechanism Plus (PRISM+) with effect from June 16, 2025 to upgrades the National Digital Payments Infrastructure.
According to the SBP, PRISM+ is built on the ISO 20022 financial messaging standard which supports structured and data-rich financial communication, enabling enhanced transparency, interoperability, and automation across the payment and settlement ecosystem.
It includes new features for liquidity management, transaction queuing and prioritization, and scheduling of future dated payments. The system offers customizable dashboards, alerts, query tools, and downloadable settlement position statements using a web-based module for real time initiation, monitoring, and approval of transactions.
Digital payments experience a remarkable growth: SBP report
The new system also provides a Central Securities Depository (CSD) platform for money market operations such as auction of government securities, sale and purchase of securities in the secondary market, collateral management and open market operations. Detailed features of PRISM+ are given in Annexure.
For settlement purposes, Transitory Accounts have been opened in the new system. At the start of each business day, the system will transfer 80 percent of balances from the Participants' Current Account held with SBP BSC (Karachi) to their respective Transitory Accounts.
To facilitate participants in managing their day-to-day liquidity, they will be able to transfer funds between their Current and Transitory Accounts at any time during business hours. Participants can also allocate funds for ancillary clearings needs (eg, Raast, NIFT, and 1Link). Accordingly, to mitigate systemic risks, participants are advised to maintain sufficient funds for their settlement needs on proactive basis.
The SBP has also advised the participants to ensure operational readiness for performing their Straight-Through Processing (STP) via PRISM+ through either the APIs or file adapters facility offered by the system.
In order to facilitate the smooth transition of STP systems to the new MX format, PRISM+ will support both MT and the new MX (ISO 20022 XML) message formats up to September 30, 2025. Accordingly, the use of native MT/MX converter facility will be discontinued, wef, October 1, 2025.
All participants are also advised to use Raast Over-the-Counter (OTC) facility for branch-initiated customer transactions that are presently being transferred using RTGS. Accordingly, all participants shall replace the RTGS OTC facility with Raast OTC in all their branches by September 30, 2025.
The SBP has asked the financial institution to review and align their operational processes and frameworks to ensure seamless and efficient integration and adoption of the new system and also retain historical data of all transactions processed through PRISM+ and ensure its availability as and when required.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
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