Ask a table of guests in Pakistan how they'd like to pay and you'll hear five answers: JazzCash, Easypaisa, NayaPay, a bank app, cash. Setting up a merchant account with each of them is a lot of paperwork. Raast is the shortcut: one ID that every one of those apps can pay.
What Raast is
Raast is Pakistan's instant payment system, run by the State Bank of Pakistan. Every bank, and every mobile wallet such as JazzCash, Easypaisa, NayaPay and SadaPay, can send money by Raast, and it arrives in seconds, at any hour.
Each account can have a Raast ID: the mobile number it's registered to. If your restaurant has a bank account, or a JazzCash or Easypaisa account, you almost certainly have a Raast ID already. There's nothing new to sign up for.
How a Raast payment works at the table
With QR ordering, the flow looks like this:
- The guest orders from their phone and chooses Pay by Raast.
- They see your Raast ID, the account title, the exact amount and their order number, each with a copy button.
- They open their own banking or wallet app, choose Raast (or "send money"), paste your Raast ID and the amount, and send it.
- Their app shows your account title before they confirm, so they can check they're paying the right restaurant.
- The money lands in your account straight away, and the order is already with your kitchen.
Because the guest pays from the same phone they ordered on, there's no QR code to scan for the payment itself; copying the ID is faster.
Confirm in your own app, never from a screenshot
This is the one rule that matters. A screenshot of a "successful" transfer is easy to fake. Before you mark a Raast order as paid:
- Check your own banking or wallet app, or the SMS your bank sends, for the incoming amount.
- Match it to the order number; ask guests to put it in the payment note.
- Only then mark it paid. In Café QR that's the Raast received button on the kitchen screen, and the guest's phone updates to "Payment confirmed" on its own.
At the counter, a busy cashier can do this in a few seconds once it's a habit.
What it costs
Raast transfers between people are free, and with simple Raast you're receiving money into your own account: there's no gateway between you and the guest, so no gateway fee. Check with your own bank for any charges on business accounts.
Tax: Raast counts as a digital payment
In Punjab, restaurant bills paid by card or digital means are taxed at 8%, against 16% for cash (more on the card and cash rates). A Raast payment is digital, so it should be billed at the digital rate. If your system prices every order the same way, you'll either overcharge Raast guests or under-collect tax on cash ones.
When a payment gateway is worth it
Simple Raast has one limit: someone has to confirm each payment. For most restaurants that's fine; you already check cash. A payment gateway (such as a JazzCash merchant account, or a gateway offering automatic Raast) confirms payments for you, and some also take cards. The trade-off is a merchant application, documents, approval time and a fee per transaction.
A sensible order of things:
- Start with simple Raast and cash. No paperwork, live the same day.
- Add a gateway when you're taking enough digital orders that confirming each one becomes a chore.
Setting it up in Café QR
On your Payments page, enter your Raast ID (or IBAN) and your account title exactly as your bank shows it, and switch Raast on. Guests see Pay by Raast in their basket from then on, and every Raast order arrives on the kitchen screen marked "check payment" until you confirm it.
See how it works for restaurants in Pakistan, or get set up and we'll walk you through it.