Bangladesh sovereign payment network
A domestic switch
that keeps the interchange
inside Bangladesh.
IntraPay is a Rust ISO 8583 card switch, a BanglaQR engine, and an MFS aggregator on one ledger. Built to drop card MDR from 2 to 3 percent down to 0.5 percent and to route cards, QR, and bKash, Nagad, or Rocket from a single merchant integration.
- Hand-rolled Rust ISO 8583 switch, tested codec
- BanglaQR engine, EMVCo TLV conformant
- MFS aggregator: bKash, Nagad, Rocket
- MDR splits enforced in the clearing engine
- PCI DSS v4.0 readiness, automated evidence
- Darwan RBAC: 35 permissions, 11 roles, 6 SoD
Card MDR, enforced in code
Clearing engine splits 0.10 / 0.25 / 0.15 between network, issuer, acquirer
A KaritKarma product / built in Dhaka, AS 64005What is IntraPay
A switch for the country.
Not a wrapper around one.
IntraPay is a domestic payment switch for Bangladesh. It does three things that today require three vendors: it authorizes ISO 8583 card transactions on a sovereign 9xxx BIN range, it generates and clears BanglaQR scan-to-pay flows, and it aggregates the bKash, Nagad, and Rocket mobile-financial rails behind one merchant API.
The Rust switch implements the ISO 8583 lifecycle by hand: MTI parsing across 0100/0110, 0200/0210, 0400/0410, and 0800/0810, a 64-bit field bitmap, and typed PAN, amount, and binary field encoding. Ten Go microservices handle clearing, settlement, tokenization, fraud routing, KYC, and partner portals, with a TypeScript merchant API in front. PCI DSS v4.0 readiness scripts and Wenme plus Darwan participant auth round out the operator stack.
9xxx BIN card rail
CardSovereign BIN range, EMV chip and contactless, instant virtual issuance through the Token Vault. Domestic transactions never cross a foreign network and never pay foreign interchange.
BanglaQR engine
QREMVCo TLV implementation in Go: merchant account info (tag 26), MCC (52), amount (54), CRC (63), static and dynamic QR, currency 050 BDT. One QR is interoperable across every participating bank app, wallet, and the IntraPay merchant SDK.
MFS aggregator
MFSbKash, Nagad, and Rocket adapters behind one interface: InitiatePayment, CheckStatus, Refund. Built so one merchant integration covers every mobile financial service in Bangladesh; adapters run against sandbox today, live credentials arrive with the bank pilots.
RTGS and BACH bridge
SettleClearing Engine produces daily bilateral net positions inside a 24-hour cut-off window. RTGS and BACH instruction generation to Bangladesh Bank is interface-complete and pending live central-bank integration.
The economic case
The interchange Bangladesh
pays today, in one table.
MDR ranges below reflect typical merchant agreements with international networks and the published bKash, Nagad, and Rocket merchant rates as of 2026. IntraPay rates are the published scheme rates, split between IntraPay, issuer, and acquirer or MFS provider.
One card transaction, end to end
What happens between
swipe and approval.
ISO 8583 in, ISO 8583 out, with a Kafka event projection per stage so clearing, settlement, dispute, and audit consumers rebuild state from the same canonical log.
k6_assert: p95_e2e < 300ms (tests/load)
issuer_rt = network bound
switch benchmark: unpublished, pre-deployment
- 01
Acquirer terminal posts ISO 8583
POS or e-commerce gateway sends a 0100 authorization request over a mutually authenticated TLS channel to the acquirer-bound switch endpoint. The hand-rolled Rust codec parses the MTI, the 64-bit field bitmap, and PAN, amount, and binary data elements.
- 02
Fraud scored over gRPC
The transaction engine calls the Python fraud service over synchronous gRPC. A PyTorch neural net (six inputs, two hidden layers) returns a fraud probability, with a deterministic heuristic fallback when the model is unavailable. The score rides the transaction context into the auth decision.
- 03
Auth decision on the issuer leg
The auth service evaluates issuer rules and limits, then forwards the request on the issuer leg. HSM key custody and post-quantum session wrapping (CRYSTALS-Kyber, Dilithium) sit on the security roadmap as design targets; nothing post-quantum ships in the current codebase.
- 04
Issuer decision returns
Issuer bank returns 0110 with action code, IntraPay completes the response chain back to the acquirer, and the Kafka event stream forks into clearing, settlement, dispute, and audit projections.
One switch, ten Go services, one fraud scorer
The whole switch fits
on one page.
A Rust switch, ten Go services, a Python fraud scorer, and a TypeScript merchant API gateway. Each service has a single responsibility and a gRPC contract under proto/, observed by three Grafana dashboards in deploy/grafana.
Card Switch
:50051ISO 8583 routing, sub-ms
Transaction Engine
:50052Central orchestrator
Token Vault
:50053Card tokenization, virtual cards
Auth Service
:50054Issuer rules, participant auth
QR Engine
:50055BanglaQR generate, validate
MFS Aggregator
:50056bKash, Nagad, Rocket
Clearing Engine
:50057Daily bilateral netting
Settlement
:50058RTGS, BACH to BB
Fraud Service
:8081PyTorch real-time scoring
Onboarding
:50061KYC, API key issuance
Partner
:50062Issuer BINs, acquirer terminals
KYC
:50063NID verify, AML watchlist
Operator posture
Built like the
infrastructure it replaces.
The card networks IntraPay competes with run on the same primitives: synchronous replication, HSM-backed keys, audited change control, observed every hop. IntraPay matches them on substance, not on slogans.
Multi-DC architecture as code
Kustomize overlays for Dhaka, Chittagong, and a Sylhet DR. PostgreSQL on Patroni with strict synchronous replication across 3 replicas, Kafka KRaft with MirrorMaker 2 cross-DC, Redis Sentinel 3+3, Istio mTLS, and scripted DR failover and failback. Pre-deployment: no drill results are published yet.
PCI DSS v4.0 readiness framework
A PCI DSS v4.0 control checklist backed by three automated validation scripts in scripts/compliance: network segmentation scan, audit-log check, encryption check. The scripts generate the evidence pack; the QSA audit and signed ROC are still ahead, and we say so.
Post-quantum on the roadmap
CRYSTALS-Kyber key encapsulation and Dilithium signatures with HSM key custody are design targets on the security roadmap. No post-quantum code ships in the current build, and this page will not claim it until it does.
Wenme + Darwan for participant auth
OAuth 2.1 with DPoP from Wenme issues participant access tokens. Darwan evaluates every action against 35 permission keys, 11 roles, and 6 separation-of-duties constraints seeded from day one. No long-lived API keys.
IntraPay vs alternatives
What it does that
the stack today does not.
Compared against Visa or Mastercard for domestic Bangladesh card flow, and against direct bKash, Nagad, and Rocket integrations for MFS. Each claim below is mapped to a shipped service or an honestly labelled roadmap item.
What is shipped, what is pending
Engineering complete.
Regulator pending.
We do not claim shipped what is not. The regulator-side milestones (BB PSP licensing, 9xxx BIN allocation, and bank pilots) are the gating path to live volume.
- Phase 1Core infra as code: K8s, Postgres + Patroni, Kafka, Redis, Istio shipped
- Phase 2Card switch (Rust), Transaction Engine, Token Vault, Auth shipped
- Phase 3BanglaQR engine, MFS aggregator (bKash, Nagad, Rocket) shipped
- Phase 4Clearing, Settlement, Fraud ML, Dispute management shipped
- Phase 5Merchant API, SDK, Portal, OpenAPI 3.1 specification shipped
- Phase 6Issuer + Acquirer portals, partner sandbox shipped
- Phase 6Pilot integration with 2 to 3 banks, 1 to 2 MFS providers pending
- Phase 7Multi-DC manifests: Chittagong overlay, Sylhet DR, scripted failover shipped
- Phase 8PCI DSS v4.0 readiness scripts, k6 load suites, DR runbooks shipped
- Phase 8BB PSP licence, 9xxx BIN allocation, PCI DSS QSA audit (ROC), pen test pending
- Phase 9Wenme OAuth 2.1 + DPoP, Darwan RBAC: 35 permissions, 11 roles, 6 SoD shipped
FAQ
Questions banks
actually ask.
Six answers covering scope, comparison, BanglaQR, latency budgets, RTGS and BACH interop, regulator state, and participant economics. Mirrored 1:1 in FAQPage JSON-LD.
What is IntraPay?
IntraPay is a sovereign domestic payment switch for Bangladesh. A hand-rolled Rust ISO 8583 switch handles card authorization, ten Go microservices run clearing, settlement, tokenization, KYC, and partner portals, a Python PyTorch fraud service scores transactions over gRPC, and a BanglaQR engine plus an MFS aggregator (bKash, Nagad, Rocket) put cards, QR, and mobile money behind one TypeScript merchant API. It is built to drop card MDR from 2 to 3 percent down to 0.5 percent and keep that fee inside the Bangladesh economy.
How is IntraPay different from going direct to bKash, Nagad, or routing via Visa and Mastercard?
Direct MFS integrations require three separate API contracts, three separate reconciliation surfaces, and three settlement timelines. Visa and Mastercard route domestic Bangladesh transactions through international networks and charge interchange in foreign currency. IntraPay collapses all of that into one integration, one settlement file, one regulator surface, and keeps fees in BDT under a single Bangladesh PSP licence. The trade-off is participation cost (annual licence fees per bank or MFS) and the network effect needs scheduled banks at the table.
Does IntraPay support BanglaQR?
Yes. The QR Engine generates and validates EMVCo-conformant BanglaQR codes that are interoperable across every participating bank app and the IntraPay merchant SDK. Bangladesh Bank requires Bangla QR acceptance for every scheduled bank, MFSP, and PSP by 30 June 2026, and IntraPay ships the merchant-side and switch-side surfaces needed to meet that requirement.
What is the switch latency and how does it interop with RTGS and BACH?
Latency figures are published as design budgets, not measurements: the k6 load suites in tests/load assert an end-to-end card response of 300 ms at p95, including fraud scoring and the issuer round trip. No switch hot-path benchmark has been published yet, so we do not quote one. On settlement, the Clearing Engine produces daily bilateral net positions, and instruction generation toward Bangladesh Bank RTGS (high-value) and BACH (batch) is interface-complete, pending live central-bank integration.
What is the production and regulator status?
Engineering Phases 1 through 9 are complete: core infrastructure as code, card switch, QR, MFS, clearing, settlement, fraud, merchant layer, partner portals, multi-DC manifests, PCI DSS v4.0 readiness scripts, and Wenme plus Darwan auth. Still open: the PCI DSS QSA audit (ROC), Bangladesh Bank PSP licensing, 9xxx BIN range allocation, pilot integrations with 2 to 3 banks and 1 to 2 MFS providers, an external penetration test, and production deployment itself. IntraPay is pre-production on a regulator-pending posture.
What does it cost a bank or MFS to participate?
Annual licence fees, per the published business model: top-10 banks 5 crore taka, mid-tier banks 2 crore taka, small banks and NBFIs 50 lakh taka, MFS providers 3 crore taka, payment facilitators 1 crore taka. Per-transaction MDR is fixed at 0.50 percent for cards, 0.30 percent for QR, 0.40 percent for MFS-aggregated payments, split between IntraPay, issuer, and acquirer or MFS provider on a published schedule.
Become a participant
One switch.
Cards, QR, MFS.
Settled inside Bangladesh.
IntraPay is recruiting pilot banks and MFS providers for the production launch window. The participant briefing covers scheme rules, fee splits, the licence application path with Bangladesh Bank, and the sandbox certification plan.