Remittances and Online Sales in Pakistan: What 7 Months of SBP Data Say About When Your Customers Have Money

Why remittances matter to a Pakistani online store

Remittances and online sales in Pakistan move on the same calendar. Money sent home by overseas Pakistanis is spent by families in Lahore, Karachi, Sialkot, Mardan and every small town your rider goes to, and a lot of it is spent on exactly what online stores sell: clothes, shoes, gifts, home items and electronics. This post takes the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) monthly remittance figures from February to August 2026, puts them in one table, and reads them from the point of view of a seller who has to decide when to buy stock and when to spend on ads.

The scale is large. Pakistan received a record $41.6 billion in workers' remittances in fiscal year 2025-26, up 8.6 percent from $38.3 billion the year before, according to SBP data reported by Profit. The new fiscal year has started faster: $7.29 billion came in during July and August 2026, up 14.7 percent on the same two months last year, as reported by The News. SBP Governor Jameel Ahmad told Arab News on July 3, 2026 that he expects $44 billion for fiscal year 2027.

One honest limit before we start: SBP publishes these numbers for the whole country and by sending country, not by city or district. So this data tells you when money arrives, not exactly where. Your own order history tells you where.

The data: monthly remittances, February to August 2026

Below is every month from February to August 2026 with its month-on-month change, as reported from SBP releases. We have marked the two Eid months. Eid ul Fitr was on March 21, 2026, after the Shawwal moon was not sighted, as reported by Aaj News. Eid ul Adha was on May 27, 2026, as announced by the Central Ruet-e-Hilal Committee and reported by The News.

Sources for each row: February and March from Zameen News quoting SBP data, April from The Standard, May from Dawn, June from Profit, July from Geo News, August from The News. May 2026 was the highest monthly inflow in Pakistan's history, according to Dawn.

Reading the numbers: three patterns a seller can use

Pattern 1: the money lands before Eid, not after. Zameen News reports that the March rise was mainly due to higher transfers from overseas Pakistanis ahead of Eid ul Fitr. Both Eid months were the two biggest jumps in the table: about 17 percent in March and 20.2 percent in May. For a seller, the days before Eid are when families have the most fresh cash. By the time Eid arrives, most shopping is already done.

Pattern 2: the month after Eid drops hard. April fell 7.6 percent and June fell 18.3 percent. The Standard and Profit both link the fall to the high Eid month before it. If your stock and ad plan for the month after Eid looks the same as the Eid month, you are likely to be left with unsold stock and expensive ads.

Pattern 3: the normal months are steady and rising. July and August 2026 were 13 percent and 16.5 percent above the same months of 2025 according to Geo News and The News. Outside Eid, the base level of money coming in is higher than last year, which is useful context when deciding whether your own slow month is a market problem or a store problem.

Where the money comes from: the Gulf is nearly half

SBP also reports remittances by sending country. Here are the four biggest for the months where the figures were published. All amounts are in US$ million.

Sources: March from Zameen News, May from Dawn, June from Profit, July from Geo News, August from The News. The share column is Saudi plus UAE divided by that month's total from the first table.

What this means for you. Saudi Arabia and the UAE alone send close to half of all remittances, and in August both grew strongly: Saudi Arabia up 19 percent and the UAE up 17 percent year on year, according to The News. Many of the people sending this money also shop for their families directly: they pick a suit, a watch or a gift box on their phone in Riyadh or Dubai and have it delivered to their mother in Gujranwala. That is a different customer from your usual buyer, and it needs a slightly different setup.

What to do with this data

1. Mark the pre-Eid weeks, not the Eid date, as your peak. Stock should be in your warehouse and your best ads live in the two weeks before Eid, when the money is arriving.
2. Plan a smaller month after each Eid. Cut stock orders and ad spend for that month in advance instead of discovering the drop halfway through.
3. Make gift orders easy. Let the buyer enter a different name and phone number for the person receiving the parcel, and add a short gift note field.
4. Confirm gift orders with the receiver, not only the buyer. A mother in Multan who did not know a parcel was coming may refuse a COD parcel. A quick WhatsApp message to the receiver before dispatch avoids a return.
5. Offer prepaid payment for overseas buyers. Someone ordering from Dubai can pay by card, so the family does not have to pay cash at the door and the parcel is less likely to come back.
6. Target Gulf audiences carefully. If you run Meta or TikTok ads to Pakistanis in Saudi Arabia or the UAE, make the ad clear that delivery is inside Pakistan, so you do not pay for clicks from people expecting delivery abroad.
7. Watch the next SBP release. SBP published September figures on October 9 in 2025, so the September 2026 numbers are likely within days. Use them as a check on whether demand is still rising before the 11.11 sale.

Example: planning ad spend around Eid with Rs numbers

Example only, not real store data. Take a store that spends Rs 300,000 a month on ads in a normal month, split evenly at Rs 10,000 a day.

The Eid-weighted plan spends Rs 10,000 less in total but puts half of the budget into the days when families have the most fresh money. In the month after Eid, the same store might plan a lower budget from day one rather than keep spending Rs 10,000 a day into a market that the SBP data shows is quieter.

Do not copy these numbers. Use your own: look at your orders per day in the two weeks before last Eid ul Adha and the four weeks after it, and set your budget split from that. The remittance data tells you the pattern; your own data tells you the size.

The harder question is whether the extra Eid spend actually made money once returns came back. RabbitROI shows net profit per ad campaign after returns, ad spend, product cost and shipping, so you can compare your Eid campaigns with normal ones on real profit, not just orders.

What the data cannot tell you

• City or district. SBP's monthly figures are national. They do not say which cities receive the most.
• Spending. A remittance is money received, not money spent. Some goes to rent, school fees, savings and bills before any shopping happens.
• Rupee value. These figures are in US dollars. What a family can buy also depends on the exchange rate and inflation that month.
• Your category. Clothing and gifts may follow Eid closely; other products may not. Check your own sales against the table above.

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