Banks and other institutions regulated by the State Bank of Pakistan will now flag a transaction to the regulator’s Financial Monitoring Unit only from Rs. 3 million. The bar for a Currency Transaction Report, or CTR, was Rs. 2 million, a level set in January 2015.
The change took effect immediately, after SBP told its regulated entities of it in a circular letter on Thursday, 12 November. It follows a Finance Ministry notification dated 11 November 2026.
SBP has listed the circular, “Currency Transaction Report (CTR) under Anti-Money Laundering Act, 2010”, explaining that the government-side step came from the National Executive Committee that oversees Pakistan’s anti-money-laundering and terrorism-financing controls, which can set the figure under the 2010 law. Its notification amends the Finance Division’s SRO 73(I)/2015 of 21 January 2015, which had fixed the Rs. 2 million threshold. SBP said it increased the threshold “with immediate effect” and ordered all banks and financial institutions to comply.
The reports are filed by the institutions themselves, and they sit alongside the separate Suspicious Transaction Reports that regulated entities must also file with the unit. Both kinds of report are required under Section 7 of the same Act.
The circular also restates a storage rule: banks must hold on to their transaction files, any checks they ran on unusual deals, and every STR and CTR they have filed for a minimum of ten years once the transaction is complete.
SBP’s instruction to every bank and financial institution is to comply with the new notification from now.
