
How Urban is Rural Pakistan?
January 26, 2026


Gallup Pakistan Digital Analytics dashboard on State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) data on payment systems.
Dashboard reveals interesting aspects which are at an interaction between financial data and social research.
When a customer pays for some some thing using a point of sale machine how many times a debit card is used vs credit card and how many times a local credit card vs international credit card is used?
The data tracks 5 years trend and its presented below
1/ Debit card share in value is increasing as proportion . A 10% rise in 5 years. To me it signifies digitization is working as POS use is moving away from upper middle class and elite phenomenon (a credit card user) to an average man or women
2/ 5% of POS credit card transactions are through a credit card issued by an international bank. The figure remains constant .
Lots of similar data points using most updated data released by SBP in its latest payment system review here:
https://lnkd.in/dVJC4QKd