# Paying contractors in Pakistan: rails, costs, and compliance
> Paying a contractor in Pakistan can cost up to $340 a payment, depending on the rail. What each one costs, and the paperwork on the receiving side.
Canonical: https://fasset.com/business/blog/paying-contractors-pakistan/

AH

Ayman Hassen

Head of Business Banking, Fasset · September 2026

[One node fanning out along straight lines to seven receiving dots]

Paying a contractor in Pakistan can cost up to $340 a payment, and the rail you pick decides most of that. A SWIFT wire is $45 to send, about $30 in correspondent fees, $15 to receive and roughly 2.5% buried in the exchange rate, which is $340 on $10,000. A payout on local rails through Fasset has a per-transfer price shown before you confirm and stated in full on the pricing page, and it settles in about 20 seconds when it moves as USDT.

The cost is the easy half. The harder half is what your contractor's bank expects on the receiving side, and what both of you need on file at the end of the year.

## What this guide will cover

- The four rails that reach a Pakistani contractor's bank account, and which one they will actually ask for
- What each rail costs on a $500, a $2,000 and a $5,000 monthly payment
- Paying in rupees against paying in dollars, and who should carry the conversion
- Contractor or employee: the classification question that decides everything downstream
- What your contractor needs from you for their own tax filing
- The proceeds realization certificate, and why a payment into a personal wallet does not produce one
- Running one monthly batch instead of fourteen individual transfers
- The three things we got wrong when we first built this

For the money coming the other way, the guide to receiving USD in Pakistan covers the same corridor from the invoice side.

The full guide ships soon. Meanwhile the product is live, and the application runs entirely online.

## Open your account

The application runs entirely online. Or walk through the product first, with sample data and no signup.

- Open an account
- See the demo

Client funds are held separately from Fasset’s own.

## Related reading

- **How to receive USD as a business in Pakistan:** A $10,000 wire loses $340, the corridor averages 2.14%, and the certificate decides the route.
- **Agency payroll across markets:** Payroll is a calendar problem before it is a payments problem. What we got wrong building it.
- **What a wire actually costs:** The full anatomy of $45 + $30 + $15 + 2.5%, itemized by who takes each fee and why.