WhatsApp commerce in Pakistan: the 2026 numbers

Pakistan is online through the phone

Pakistan had 211 million mobile phone subscriptions at the end of August 2026, according to the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, or 83.5 for every 100 people ^[1]. Of 167 million broadband subscriptions, 162 million were on mobile networks: for 97 in every 100 connections, the internet is a phone ^[1].

Subscriptions are not people, and many Pakistanis carry two SIMs. Counting people, DataReportal estimates 117 million internet users at the end of 2025, 45.6% of the population, which leaves about 139 million not yet online ^[2]. The median mobile download speed was 24.32 Mbps ^[2].

The gap between men and women is closing quickly. The GSMA found that Pakistan's mobile internet gender gap fell from 38% in 2023 to 25% in 2024, the largest improvement among the 80 countries it surveyed; 8 million women and 5 million men started using mobile internet that year ^[3]. Women still account for only 28.8% of social media user identities ^[2].

WhatsApp is where people talk

There is no official count of WhatsApp users in Pakistan. Meta doesn't publish figures by country, and the totals that circulate online are estimates. The most reliable measure is a survey: in a nationally representative survey of adults published in December 2024, Gallup & Gilani Pakistan found that 55% had used WhatsApp the day before, rising to 58% of men and 61% of people in cities ^[4].

WhatsApp is also the app people choose for staying in touch. Asked which social apps they use to keep up with friends and family, 51% of social media users named WhatsApp, ahead of Facebook (33%), YouTube (29%) and TikTok (26%) ^[5]. For a business, the point is simple: customers already open WhatsApp every day, among the chats with their family.

Paying online is going digital

In the year to June 2025, the State Bank of Pakistan counted 9.1 billion retail payments worth PKR 612 trillion. 88% went through digital channels, up from 78% two years earlier, and mobile banking apps alone handled 6.2 billion transactions, 52% more than the year before ^[6].

Online shopping is following the same path. Of the online purchases paid electronically that year, about 684 million went through bank accounts or digital wallets and 52 million through debit or credit cards: 93% accounts and wallets, up from 87% a year earlier ^[6]. In Pakistan, paying online mostly means paying from a phone, not with a card.

Shops can take these payments without a card machine. Merchants able to accept QR code payments doubled in a year, from 516,317 to 1,092,044, and 838,856 of them use Raast, the State Bank's instant payment system. QR payments reached 86 million transactions worth PKR 234 billion in the year ^[6].

Cash on delivery still rules ordering

The State Bank's figures cover only purchases paid electronically. Cash handed to a courier isn't in them, and no official source measures how many online orders in Pakistan are paid on delivery.

The most detailed public figures come from one retailer. OrderNation, an online store selling mainly mobile accessories across Pakistan since 2014, published its order data in June 2026: 94.5% of about 170,000 orders placed between June 2025 and May 2026 were cash on delivery ^[7]. Those orders were cancelled 37.3% of the time, against 2.8% for prepaid orders, and about one in five shipped parcels came back undelivered (19.4% of shipped order value) ^[7].

One shop is not the whole market, and the report says so itself. It is still the clearest public measure of what cash on delivery costs: a parcel that comes back has used up packing, courier charges and days of stock that could have been sold.

What WhatsApp costs a business in 2026

The free WhatsApp Business app on a phone isn't billed per message. Businesses that connect through Meta's WhatsApp Business Platform (the Cloud API, usually through a provider) are, and the rules have changed twice since mid-2025 ^[8]:

• Since 1 July 2025, Meta charges per delivered message, by message type and the customer's country. Messages from customers to a business are free.
• Templates, the pre-approved messages a business can send at any time, are charged as marketing, utility or authentication messages.
• Since 1 October 2026, ordinary replies (service messages) are charged too, after 1,000 free ones per business phone number each month. Numbers with no payment method on file stop delivering replies once the free 1,000 are used.
• When a customer starts a chat from a Click-to-WhatsApp ad on their phone and the business replies in time, Meta charges nothing for the business's messages while that window is open, for up to 7 days.

What it means for your business

Our reading of the numbers above.

1. 01

   Be quick on WhatsApp

   More than half of adults use WhatsApp on any given day. That is where customers ask, compare and decide, and a slow reply sends them to the next shop.

2. 02

   Confirm cash-on-delivery orders before they ship

   At one large retailer, more than a third of cash orders were cancelled. A short confirmation message costs far less than a parcel that comes back.

3. 03

   Make paying upfront easy

   Wallets and bank accounts already carry 93% of online purchases paid electronically. Offering Raast QR or a wallet number, perhaps with a small discount, turns some cash orders into paid ones.

4. 04

   Write for a phone screen

   Nearly all broadband in Pakistan is mobile. Keep messages short and clear, in the language the customer writes in: English, Urdu or Roman Urdu.

5. 05

   Know what your WhatsApp setup costs

   On the official platform, count your monthly replies against the 1,000 free ones, and remember that chats from Click-to-WhatsApp ads open a free window.

6. 06

   Plan for the people still to come online

   About 139 million Pakistanis aren't online yet, and in 2024 more women than men started using mobile internet.

How we made this report

This report brings together the latest public figures available on 14 October 2026. We used official sources where they exist (PTA, the State Bank of Pakistan, Meta), established research firms where they don't (DataReportal, GSMA, Gallup & Gilani Pakistan), and one company's published data where nothing else measures the question, labelled as such.

Different sources measure different things: subscriptions are not people, population figures include children while surveys ask adults, and the State Bank counts payments, not orders. We report each figure as its source defines it and don't combine them. Pakistan's fiscal year runs from July to June.

We update this page when PTA, the State Bank or Meta publish new figures. Chatziq never shares data about any business that uses it; if we add figures from our own service, they will be anonymised totals across at least 20 businesses, with the method explained here.

Chatziq makes WhatsApp AI software for businesses, so we have an interest in this subject; the figures come from the sources below, not from us. Read our editorial standards, and tell us if anything is out of date.

Questions

How many people use WhatsApp in Pakistan?

There is no official count: Meta doesn't publish users by country. The most reliable measure is a survey by Gallup & Gilani Pakistan (December 2024), which found that 55% of adults had used WhatsApp the day before, 58% of men and 61% of people in cities.

What share of online orders in Pakistan are cash on delivery?

No official source measures it. At one large online retailer, OrderNation, 94.5% of about 170,000 orders placed between June 2025 and May 2026 were cash on delivery. Among online purchases that are paid electronically, the State Bank of Pakistan reports that 93% went through bank accounts or wallets in 2024-25.

How many mobile internet users does Pakistan have?

PTA counted 162 million mobile broadband subscriptions at the end of August 2026. Subscriptions are not people; DataReportal estimates 117 million internet users in Pakistan at the end of 2025, 45.6% of the population.

Does WhatsApp charge businesses for replies in 2026?

On Meta's WhatsApp Business Platform (the Cloud API), yes: since 1 October 2026, replies (service messages) are charged after 1,000 free ones per business phone number each month. Templates such as marketing messages are charged per delivered message. The WhatsApp Business app on a phone isn't billed per message.

Can I use these figures?

Yes. Quote any figure with a link to this page, and please name the original source for each number as well; they are all listed at the end of the report.

Sources

1. 1.Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, Telecom indicators (figures as of August 2026), 31 August 2026.
2. 2.DataReportal (Kepios), Digital 2026: Pakistan, 8 November 2025.
3. 3.Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, GSMA reports landmark growth in women's mobile internet adoption (on the GSMA Mobile Gender Gap Report 2025), 15 May 2025.
4. 4.Gallup & Gilani Pakistan, More than half (55%) of Pakistanis used WhatsApp a day before, 18 December 2024.
5. 5.Gallup & Gilani Pakistan, Among Pakistanis who use social media, WhatsApp (51%) is most popular for staying in touch, 9 August 2024.
6. 6.State Bank of Pakistan, Annual Payment Systems Review FY2024-25, 3 November 2025.
7. 7.OrderNation Research, State of Online Shopping in Pakistan 2026, 10 June 2026.
8. 8.Meta, Pricing on the WhatsApp Business Platform (developer documentation, as of 1 October 2026), 1 October 2026.