Receiving credit card payments in Pakistan from your customers is not as simple as some make it sound. But it is not as complicated either.

If you are interested in making money in Pakistan, then accepting online payments from customers can be a good skill to have.

The current method which works for me (and many like me) is as follow:

How Credit Card Payments in Pakistan Work?

To be clear, we are talking about accepting credit card payment online, for your ecommerce store (and not accept cards on Point-of-Sales at a physical location etc).

So having said that, we first have to understand how the process works.

You don’t need to know each and every little thing about something to use it, right? I mean, one doesn’t need to know how gear ratios work to figure out how to drive an automatic transmission car, right? In the same sense, you just need to know the process of how you can accept credit card payment in Pakistan for your online store… and inshAllah the rest you’ll figure it out as you take action and implement.

The process is as follows:

1. When someone buys from your e-commerce store, they enter their credit card information to pay you for the product they’re buying.
2. That payment is processed by a credit card payment gateway (like 2CheckOut for example). By “Processed” I mean the following:
   1. The gateway checks if the credit card entered by your client is valid
   2. It checks if it has any funds in it
   3. It charges the credit card on your behalf
   4. It also checks against basic fraud signals to catch any credit card theft etc
   5. It then takes that payment from the credit card and keeps it with itself
3. After the payment is confirmed, the order is marked “paid” automatically (this is usually done by integrating your shopping cart with the payment gateway – WooCommerce / WordPress integrates well with 2CheckOut by the way)
4. Note that you still have not received the payment as that is with the payment processor (2CheckOut in this example), this is where Payoneer usually plays a crucial role
5. You need to get paid by the payment gateway now, your money is with them. How that happens? They can do a bank transfer to your bank account (this can take some setting up to do with your bank here in Pakistan for example). Or they can pay you on your Payoneer card. The Payoneer card is the option I currently use as well, and that works just fine Alhumdulillah.
6. To know more about getting your own Payoneer card set up from Pakistan, click here on my resource related to that.

So as you can see, broadly speaking, here are the systems you need in place to run a successfuly ecommerce store in Pakistan:

1. An online store (either built on WordPress/WooCommerce, Shopify or Fishry).
2. An online store means you have a shopping cart… now you need a payment gateway that can accept credit/debit cards as a form of payment from your customers. A shopping cart will allow you to have “cash on delivery”, and also allow you to add other payment gateways. Cash on Delivery is a “payment gateway” in that sense. But to accept cards in Pakistan you need a payment gateway that accept credit and debit cards in Pakistan.
3. And then you need a way of getting payments from that credit card gateway to you. This means that when someone pays for your products with their card, the payment is deducted by the payment gateway and then sent to your bank account.

Like I said, it can get a bit overwhelming. But now you know you have three very different systems to build. And that makes it simple. I hope this article was helpful for you.

I made a video how I use the 2Checkout payment gateway (now Verifone) to accept credit cards for my online stores in Pakistan. That is an old video, now we have seen success with using Stripe in Pakistan.

Payment Gateways in Pakistan

Using Stripe to Accept Card Payments in Pakistan

Yes, this is true. You can use Stripe to accept card payment in Pakistan.

Credit Card Payments in Pakistan are Improving

It is improving, but still there is tons of room for improvement.

I have been at this game for a long time now. Alhumdulillah. And I’ve seen some very messy set ups just to get the payments in from international clients. I sold my first website in 1999! And as you can see in the video below, I used a very different set up for one of my online “experiments”

In Pakistan, I have used SafePay to process credit cards, and I really, really liked their product and the easy of set up.

I used them extensively, but then they went silent – only later I found out that they are now being backed by Stripe – the international payments giant, and SafePay seems set for a comeback, lets hope so. The payment gateway scene in Pakistan I hope picks up steam.

Thing to remember is to look at this as an opportunity to not only learn, but also to have fun while doing it. Once you understand how the overall system works, it is going to be pretty straight forward as well. God willing.

Frequently Asked Questions

Judging from the comments and questions people have about accepting credit card payment in Pakistan, I can see it can be confusing. So I have tried my best below to answer some of the most common questions I saw:

Is Payoneer card necessary to accept credit card payments? No, but I use it as part of the process to receive payments.

Is Stripe working in Pakistan? Stripe is the best way to accept credit cards and debit cards from Pakistan, and in Pakistan. The problem has been that Stripe does not allow websites from Pakistan to sign up. But with a workaround, you can now use Stripe to take card payments on your website.

So no, technically Stripe is not working. But a judaaR exists where you can start accepting Stripe in Pakistan

Is 2CheckOut the only method to accept credit card payments in Pakistan? No, not at all. But unfortunately, the other methods – so far at least – are more cumbersome than setting up a 2CheckOut account. These days, 2Checkout (Verifone) is not easily accepting applications from Pakistan. There are a lot of local players that can help you set your website up to accept credit and debit cards from your customers.

2CheckOut has rejected my application, can you please tell me what to do? Well, I don’t work for 2CheckOut, I am their customer. This resource I have – and other ecommerce store creation resources etc – are to share with you my journey of running online businesses, especially from Pakistan. Having said that, the most common problem for your 2Checkout application being rejected is that you probably didn’t provide the required documentation. Yes, I know this is a cumbersome, but this is part of the game that we’ve signed up to play. So let’s play. Bismilla. Keep trying, you’ll figure it out.

If you have any further questions, you can contact me here. Or hit me up on Instagram.