As of the third quarter of 2025, Pi Network is still in the closed mainnet stage, and the direct bank redemption from pi to pkr has not yet achieved a legal channel. The cryptocurrency regulatory framework of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) explicitly requires exchanges to obtain EMI licenses. Currently, only two platforms (such as Binance) have completed 40% of the compliance process, resulting ina risk assessment value of up to 85% for the Pi to PKR business by local banks (based on the KPMG compliance report). For instance, the case of a user in Karachi being rejected when attempting to transfer money through HBL bank in 2024 highlights the current situation where the integration rate of fiat currency gateways is less than 10%.
In actual operation, users need to be converted through the secondary market: First, sell on a trading platform that supports Pi/USDT (such as Gate.io) at the market price of $35.2 (with ±5% fluctuation), and then exchange PKR through a P2P channel. However, this process involves three layers of transaction fees – platform commission of 0.1%-1.5% (median 0.8%), and the average P2P transfer fee is 15-30PKR per transaction. In addition, the exchange rate deviation is 3% to 7%. According to CoinGecko’s 2025 data, 1,000 Pi ultimately yields approximately 54,000PKR (which should be 58,500PKR at market prices), with an efficiency loss of 7.7%.
The specific local bank restrictions are as follows: Mainstream banks such as UBL and MCB require manual review for 72 hours for each cross-border cryptocurrency-to-related transfer, with a daily limit of 500,000 PKR (approximately $1,800). Moreover, according to SBP Circular No. 279 of 2023, transactions exceeding 2 million PKR will trigger anti-money laundering system alerts, increasing compliance costs by 23%. In contrast, the transaction of a certain user in Faisalabad was received in just 15 minutes through the JazzCash e-wallet, but the monthly cumulative limit was only 100,000 PKR, which could not meet large demands.
The technical challenges are even more severe: The compatibility error rate between the Pi chain and the banking system API reaches 12% (data from the 2025 white paper), processing only 5 to 7 transactions per second (TPS), which is far lower than the traditional banking system’s standard of over 1,000 TPS. Tests by a certain development team in Islamabad show that the complete verification cycle from Pi Wallet to JS Bank requires 6 data verifications, with an average time consumption of 47 minutes, and the failure probability is 19% due to the difference in encryption signature algorithms.
The feasible path for the future depends on two key elements: first, the core team of Pi needs to accelerate the KYC certification (the current completion rate is 38%), and second, wait for the approval of the stablecoin pilot by SBP – following the model of the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates in March 2025, allowing authorized exchanges to reserve and issue PI-pegged coins at a 1:1 ratio, reducing the exchange error rate to within 0.5%. At present, the safest option remains over-the-counter (OTC) trading, but it involves a 15% price spread risk and a potential fraud probability of 7.3% (annual statistics from the FIA Cybercrime Department).