Today, Pakistan’s National Institutional Facilitation Technologies (NIFT) and M10 Networks announced that they will work together to make it easier for businesses in Pakistan to make digital business-to-business payments and to make low-cost, secure, and instant cross-border transfers.
Tokenization of regulated liabilities like central bank money, commercial bank money, and digital currencies, as well as low-cost, secure business-to-business payments, are some of the ways M10 helps banks move money in a new way.
In 1995, NIFT was formed by six of Pakistan’s biggest banks and private sector businesspeople to help people find jobs.
It is the country’s leading payment system operator (PSO) for cheque clearing and the leading digital payment gateway, providing an electronic platform for the clearing, processing, routing, and switching of electronic transactions in Pakistan.
The partnership between M10 and NIFT was made in response to Pakistan’s Federal Board of Revenue’s plan to change tax laws in 2021, which will require businesses to pay for things with digital money if they spend more than $250,000.
If you want to make a digital payment, you can use the M10 shared hierarchical ledger and digital authorization technology to make the payment. NIFT is the local operator of the M10 platform.
According to local rules, NIFT will settle digital payments in accordance with these rules and with its existing settlement mechanisms.
Subject to regulatory approval, M10 and NIFT will collaborate with nine local participating banks to enable the authorization of commercial payments between commercial entities in Pakistan.
“NIFT continues to play a critical and proactive role in Pakistan’s payment system modernization,” says Haider Wahab, NIFT’s CEO.
We are committed to delivering an interbank payment system that is efficient, swift, secure, and convenient, enabling economic growth to continue to thrive. This new partnership with M10 Networks expands Pakistan’s payment infrastructure’s exciting new possibilities and positions the country at the cutting edge of innovation in this space, “he added.
When it comes to digital payments, “M10’s turnkey solution allows central banks and participating commercial banks around the world to quickly realise the benefits of digital payments while staying in compliance with current regulations and causing very little disruption to their existing systems,” says Marten Nelson, CEO and co-founder of M10.
“Our shared, hierarchical ledger technology enables secure, low-cost business-to-business and cross-border payments at a rate of up to one million transactions per second. With NIFT as the local operator, the M10 platform will significantly contribute to Pakistan’s payment infrastructure modernization and will enable participating local banks to easily comply with the country’s new tax regulations, “he added.
The project will begin in the second quarter of 2022 and be completed in three phases by the first half of 2023.
