Cashless Islamabad now has two hard dates. Government offices in the capital will stop taking cash after 30 November, and every merchant in the city is meant to accept digital payments by 31 December, Minister of State for Interior Talal Chaudhry said on Friday.
Business Recorder reported that Chaudhry, chairing a meeting in Islamabad, said no cash payments would be accepted at any department of the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) administration or the Capital Development Authority (CDA) after 30 November. CDA Chairman Sohail Ashraf and representatives of the banking sector attended.
What the cashless Islamabad deadline covers
The two deadlines are different in kind. The 30 November cutoff applies to the government's own counters, which it controls directly. The 31 December target covers private businesses, from street vendors to large commercial centres, according to Business Recorder and Profit.
"Around 26,000 merchants in Islamabad have already been connected to the digital payment system," Chaudhry said, as quoted by Business Recorder. Neither report gives the total number of merchants in the city, so it is not possible to say how far there is to go.
What came before
The capital has been moving in phases. The Express Tribune reported that a first phase brought digital payments to weekly bazaars, the CDA One-Window Facilitation Centre and the metro and electric bus services, and that a second phase aims to put Raast QR across malls, markets, hotels, petrol pumps and restaurants. In October 2025, ProPakistani reported that the CDA's One-Window centre began accepting QR payments through Easypaisa and JazzCash.
Friday's meeting came a day after a Finance Division meeting on Cashless Pakistan asked the State Bank to draft a working paper on a Raast QR merchant discount rate scheme, where the government reported 2.03 million active digital payment merchants nationwide.
Why it matters for payment companies
A city-wide merchant target with a fixed date is a sales window for banks, wallets and acquirers that sign up shops for QR acceptance. Most of that acceptance runs on Raast, the State Bank's instant payment rail. For background on how far digital payments have already spread, see what SBP's latest data says about payments.
Several questions are still open. The reports do not say how the 31 December merchant target will be enforced, whether any fee will apply to merchants, or what happens to businesses that are not connected by then. Until the merchant discount rate is settled, the economics for providers signing up small shops are not known.