Bank Alfalah Raast & IBFT — Transfers, Limits & Charges

What Is Raast?

Raast is Pakistan's national instant payment system, designed, owned, and operated by the State Bank of Pakistan. It lets individuals, businesses, and government entities send and receive money between different banks and financial institutions in seconds, using a simple identifier — typically a registered mobile number — instead of a full account number. SBP's own framework specifies Raast carries no charges and no minimum transaction size, though actual availability of specific Raast channels (P2P, bulk payments, P2M) can vary by bank, so it's worth confirming what's live on your own bank's app.

Setting Up Your Bank Alfalah Raast ID

Your Raast ID is your registered mobile number, linked to one Bank Alfalah account at a time. Bank Alfalah supports two ways to register:

To link a different account later, use the same Register/Re-link tab in Alfa and select the new account — this automatically de-links the old one. If you'd rather not receive funds via Raast ID for a while, you can temporarily de-link it from the same menu without closing the underlying account.

Sending & Receiving via Raast

You can send money to anyone with a Raast ID (their mobile number) or directly to their IBAN — the receiver doesn't need a Raast ID registered to receive a transfer sent to their IBAN. To receive funds on your own Raast ID, you must register it first; sharing your IBAN works even without registration. In the Alfa app, add a Raast payee under My Payees > Create New Payee > select Raast, then enter the recipient's IBAN or Raast ID.

Bank Alfalah's own Alfa FAQ documentation caps each individual Raast transaction at PKR 10,000, with your overall daily limit set by your Alfa transaction package. This per-transaction cap is worth checking against current terms before you rely on it for a large transfer — if you need to move more than PKR 10,000 in one go, IBFT or a bank transfer may be the better channel depending on the current limits on each.

Raast P2M — Paying Merchants by QR

Raast P2M (Person-to-Merchant) lets Bank Alfalah customers pay participating merchants instantly by scanning a Raast QR code through the Alfa app, or via SBP's broader Request-to-Pay (RTP) flow where a merchant sends a payment request the customer approves in-app. For merchants, Bank Alfalah currently charges a 0% Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) on Raast QR payments, with settled funds credited to either a BAFL settlement account or an IBFT-enabled IBAN account. Alfa's own QR is described as a combined Raast, Visa, and Mastercard (Masterpass) QR, so the same code can typically accept more than one payment scheme.

What Is IBFT?

Interbank Funds Transfer (IBFT) is the longer-established electronic transfer rail connecting Pakistani banks through 1LINK, used to send money to another bank using the recipient's full account number or IBAN rather than a Raast-style identifier. It's typically available through the Alfa app, Alfa Web (internet banking), and — for some transaction types — over the counter at a branch.

IBFT Charges & Limits

These figures come from Bank Alfalah's own Alfa Islamic product disclosure and match the bank's published IBFT FAQ for the conventional app. Older Bank Alfalah FAQ material has referenced a flat "PKR 50 + FED per transaction" IBFT charge instead — if you see that figure elsewhere, treat the monthly-threshold structure above as the current one, since it's the version in Bank Alfalah's more recent disclosures, but confirm against the live Schedule of Charges (bankalfalah.com/digital-banking/schedule-of-charges) before relying on either figure for a specific transfer.

Raast vs. IBFT — Which to Use

Where both are available for a given transfer amount, Raast is generally the cheaper option since it carries no charges at all — the PKR 10,000 per-transaction cap is the main reason to fall back to IBFT for anything larger.

Failed or Delayed Transfers

Both Raast and IBFT are built to credit the beneficiary's account instantly. If a transfer is deducted from your account but doesn't appear in the beneficiary's account within a day, Bank Alfalah's guidance is to contact the 24/7 call center at 111-225-111 or email contactus@bankalfalah.com with the transaction reference number, date, time, and beneficiary details. If the issue isn't resolved through the call center, escalate through Bank Alfalah's formal complaint channel — see our Helpline & Complaints guide for the full escalation path, including SBP's complaint mechanism if the bank's own process doesn't resolve it.

Raast & IBFT FAQs