Meezan Bank Opens Pakistan’s First 24/7 Assisted Service Center at Clifton Bridge

KARACHI: Meezan Bank on Thursday inaugurated what it describes as the country’s first round-the-clock Assisted Service Center, a compact banking facility at Clifton Bridge that pairs self-service machines with a live, video-linked teller available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The format is a departure from the conventional branch. Instead of a counter staffed during business hours, the Center’s Cheque and Cash Deposit Machines are backed by Meezan Bank’s Virtual Teller service — a video-based channel that connects a customer standing at the machine to a centrally located teller over live audio and video. That teller walks the customer through transactions that would ordinarily require a branch visit, in real time.

Meezan Bank says it is the only institution in the local industry currently offering assisted teller support at deposit machines around the clock. The claim has not been independently verified.

The inauguration was led by President and Chief Executive Officer Dr. Syed Amir Ali, alongside Chief Operating Officer for Retail and Branch Banking Operations Zia Ul Hasan, General Manager and Head of Operations Ebrahim Yakoob, and other senior management.

The facility supports cash withdrawals and deposits, balance inquiries, mini statements and funds transfers within prescribed limits. Customers can deposit both Meezan Bank cheques and cheques drawn on other banks, and encash Meezan Bank cheques. On-site staff remain available for product information, digital banking activation and service requests — a hybrid staffing model that keeps a human presence without the overhead of a full branch.

The bank frames the proposition as speed with reassurance: fewer forms, shorter queues and more customer control, while preserving the trust customers associate with dealing with a person rather than a screen.

For lenders, the appeal of the assisted-service format is structural. Branch networks are expensive to run and constrained by fixed hours, while pure self-service kiosks struggle with exception handling — the misread cheque, the unfamiliar customer, the transaction that needs a second pair of eyes. A centralised teller pool serving multiple locations over video sits between the two, extending service hours without multiplying headcount.

Clifton Bridge, a dense commercial and residential corridor, offers a useful test bed for footfall outside conventional banking hours.

The launch sits within a wider push at Pakistan’s largest Islamic bank to shift routine volume away from the counter. Meezan has built an acquiring network of more than 50,000 merchants, integrated with the State Bank of Pakistan’s Raast instant payment rails, and continued to grow adoption of its mobile banking app and WhatsApp Banking channel alongside digital account opening.

That expansion is supported by a strong balance sheet. The bank reported profit after tax of Rs 48.88 billion for the first half of 2026 and operates a network of more than 1,150 branches across 372 cities — scale that gives it room to fund experimentation in service delivery.

The open question is replication. A single site proves the technology works; the harder test is whether the central teller pool holds up under load, whether older customers take to video-assisted banking, and whether the model can be rolled out to smaller cities where branch coverage is thinnest and the case for extended hours is strongest.

If those conditions hold, the Clifton Bridge site may prove less a showcase than a template.