Digitalising cash payments for families in Pakistan

Discover how we enabled financial inclusion for Save the Children through our simple, secure and digital Straight2Bank solution.

21 May 2026

4 mins

Corporate & investment bankingDigital solutionsTransaction banking

This case study won the Overall Winner Special Recognition Award at Treasury Today Asia’s Adam Smith Awards Asia 2022

Background

Save the Children (STC) projects contribute to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) for no poverty and zero hunger. Save the Children piloted a Cash Voucher Assistance – Child Protection micro-grant project in two districts of Sindh and Punjab in Pakistan. Under the said project, Save the Children provided three months of cash assistance to the targeted households, whose children were involved in child labour and were identified and referred through the case management teams of the child protection units established by the organisation.

For disbursing cash to the beneficiary households, Save the Children utilised the robust cash transfer mechanism (mobile wallets) of Standard Chartered Bank in Pakistan, primarily because the overall intent was to.

Clients’ preference/requirements

• To disburse cash to beneficiaries without requiring beneficiaries to open up bank accounts.
• Minimal KYC/CDD process requirements.
• Ensure safe, effective, and efficient cash transfers with agreed service levels at distribution points.
• Go with a service provider that offers a simple and secure process of disbursement; to cater to a target market that is largely rural.
• Ensure a fool proof method of beneficiary authentication to eliminate incidents of fraud.
• Have access to real-time information on payments for monitoring.
• Provide distribution points close to the beneficiary location, to meet the required sphere standards set by the donor.

The benefits to Save the Children

• Approach: With the implementation of this project, STC was able to reach thousands of households in remote areas in a failsafe method to disburse cash and extend aid where it is needed most. This is being done on the back of automated payment file transfer and real-time transaction monitoring, enhancing control, settlement times and access to a wide network of Telenor Bank distributors.
• Control and security: Triple-level authentication of beneficiary combined with automated payment file transfer from STC to Standard Chartered to Telenor Bank provides security, audit trail, control, and oversight to STC.
• Visibility: Real-time viewing access of disbursal status via the S2B online portal.

Bilal Taj, Director Finance, highlighted that as far as the current situation is concerned, they are planning to provide multi-purpose cash assistance to beneficiaries. However, this needs to be aligned with Pakistan Government policy and in consultation with the UN and other agencies, particularly the cash working group.

MPCA is currently the focus and priority of the majority of the donors and we will definitely explore further around the digitisation.

Bilal Taj

Director Finance, Save the Children