Branchless banking and digitization carry significant advantages in the acceleration of financial service penetration. According to PTA, In Pakistan there are an estimated 161 million mobile phone users with 70 million who have access to 3g/4g services. Mobile phones were first used for remittances, but now the telecom companies as well as banks, like Tameer, are bolting on other services such as savings, life insurance; some are even looking at mobile lending, although in small amounts. Only about 12% of Pakistan’s population is banked, so there is room for tremendous expansion as the process snowballs. With mobile banking, conducting financial transactions – such as bill payments, money transfers and purchases – in a timely, secure and efficient manner becomes easier. This builds the aspiration toward a world in which everybody with a mobile phone, even those living in remote areas, can access and operate a full set of financial services. For the poor, it improves income and expense management and reduces their vulnerability to unforeseen events. Mobile penetration has also led to the emergence of branchless banking (BB) by minimizing the cost of transactions and bank branches. It contributes to economic growth through the channels of output growth, employment generation, productivity, reduced transaction costs, better functioning markets and financial inclusion, leading to poverty alleviation. However, improvements in making the unbanked population a part of the formal financial system by improving their access to financial services can serve as a poverty eradication tool, foster inclusive growth and help countries meet the sustainable development goals

According to the Payment Systems Statistics prepared and published by the State Bank of Pakistan, as of 30 September 2017, out of 178 million electronic banking transactions consumers conducted in the country during the 4^th quarter of FY2017, a meager 3.5 million (less than 2%) were conducted using cell phones. These statistics indicate that the present status of mobile and payment adoption and usage in Pakistan is unsatisfactory and, therefore, Pakistan is failing to reap the plentiful benefits mobile technology offers to consumers and service providers. These benefits include but not limited to increasing convenience, low transactions cost and the option of accessing the banking information anytime anywhere. Nevertheless, the branchless banking domain has begun to produce above satisfactory results in the country, and wider adoption and usage of branchless banking services (such as Easypaisa) among the under banked and unbanked population has been noticed recently.

The awareness of how to build effective digital channels has risen significantly in recent years. However, a typical pitfall we observe is that many projects falter because not enough thinking goes into actively stimulating customer adoption with regards to facilitation and innovation in the digital services. In our experience, there is no silver bullet to stimulate customer adoption of digital spectrum. Rather, the answer lies in pulling a combination of different levers and iterating approaches based on customer testing and providing a platform such proficient and technically sophisticated applications that the users are guided into using the digital mechanism. For this, it is crucial to develop a culture of digital ecosystem that primarily aims to migrate people into using smartphones technology in their daily lives and mainstream their activities in a more efficient and easy way. Mishal Pakistan and its partners, AGAHI and Academy of Responsibilities tends to facilitate the trend of fostering digital ecosystem in Pakistan by recognizing the achievement of financial institutions who have leveraged upon the task of assisting its customers into a global digital spectrum through reshaping the technological paradigm.