Payments

Online Payment Methods in Pakistan : 2023 Guide

Aamish Mirza

Online Payment Methods in Pakistan : 2023 Guide

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With the growing eCommerce industry, there are now plenty of options in terms of payment gateways in Pakistan. Considering all the available options, it might be difficult for you to decide which is the best for your business. 

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This blog will tell you about the differences in payment gateways in 2023. The purpose of this blog will be to make it easier for you to choose the best payment gateway for your business. The key indicators to figure this out should be how much the payment gateway services charge, integration time & complexity along with the fact that how often would customers in Pakistan use it. 

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Question 1: How do you expect your customers to pay for the product? 

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All in all, there are 4 universal ways of taking payments from your customers.

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1. Debit/Credit Card ( this includes Visa/Mastercard/Union pay)

2. Mobile wallets  (this includes Easypaisa, JazzCash, Bykea wallet)

3. Account transfer ( All big banks are used for this service)

4. Cash on Delivery. 

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According to most surveys done credit/ debit cards and COD are the most popular methods of payment. Moreover, it's always good to keep various options for your customers. By doing this you can target local customers across all socio-economic classes. However, if you are targeting a high socio-economic class only the credit card option is good. 

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Questions 2: What company offers what services? 

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There are multiple payment gateways in Pakistan some of which are operated by large banks, while others are fintech (PSO/PSP/EMIs) that are operating under a license by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP).

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Cards Wallet BT* Payment Link
Payfast ✔️ ❌ ✔️ ✔️
Paypro ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ ❌
APG ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ ✔️
MPGS ✔️ ✔️ ❌ ✔️
NiFT ePay ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ ❌
HBL Konnect ❌ ✔️ ✔️ ❌
HBL Cyber Source ✔️ ❌ ❌ ❌
MCB eGate ✔️ ❌ ❌ ❌
UBL Payment Gateway ✔️ ❌ ✔️ ❌

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Despite the analysis given above it's always better to go for a payment gateway operated by a bank. As all those being operated by the fintech have had restrictions placed on them in the past which resulted in their gateway being shut down for periods of time which is not ideal.

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Question 3: Which is the easiest to integrate into?

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Running an e-commerce store takes work. To top it off there may be some payment gateway providers whose integration time is a lot. 

The most popular eCommerce platforms are WooCommerce, Shopify, Magento, and OpenCart within Pakistan and unfortunately, very few payment gateways have plugins developed for these platforms, and if they do you are not given access until you reach out to their team. If you are looking for a self-service platform then you are unfortunately going to struggle.

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Question 4: Pricing of various payment gateways 

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The costs that you pay to a payment gateway vary based on the payment method used and the size and volume you process. There is usually an MDR (Merchant Discount Rate) that you have to pay, which is a very oddly termed way of saying the fee you pay to the bank in terms of percentage of revenue. I.e. a 2% MDR means that for a 100 rupee transaction, the bank will pay you back 98 rupees. Some payment gateways also charge a per-transaction fee, which is a set rupee value that you will pay per transaction. It's also always a good idea to check whether the fees include WHT (withholding tax). At the time of writing WHT in Pakistan is calculated at 0.16% of the total amount. 

For Credit/Debit Cards you can expect an MDR of between 1.8 - 3.3% depending on the overall volume that you give to the payment gateway. Some gateways also charge a higher rate for international transactions. 

Mobile Wallets usually offer the cheapest MDR of 1% which you can get with JazzCash and EasyPaisa. 

OTC MDR’s can range from 1.5% to 2%

Account Based Transfers also have a high range, with some offering the services for free to charge up to 2%. There are also some services that offer tiered based pricing based on the volume of the transaction. I.e for an order up to Rs 10,000 the charge will be a fixed fee of something like 20 PKR or higher. 

Depending on your payment gateway they might also charge you for processing refunds/chargebacks or disputes, it's always a good idea to check this beforehand when you are negotiating your fees. 

  

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The above picture is a pricing list of all payment gateways and checkout solution providers. 

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bSecure the Universal Checkout Solution 

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We created bSecure because we as entrepreneurs were very unhappy with the integration processes. We also wanted a better customer experience to shop on local websites. So we took this into our own hands and bSecure became the fix. 

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The best and most attractive features of bSecure are that firstly there is no need for long integrations. If you use bSecure you will not have to pay Shopify charges. Moreover, there's no risk of fraud as we are one of the very few PCI DSS complaints companies.

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Aamish Mirza

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