The Complete Guide to Company Formation in Pakistan

Incorporating in Pakistan has a reputation it no longer deserves. The whole process — name reservation through to the Certificate of Incorporation — runs through SECP’s eServices portal, and for a straightforward private limited company it is usually finished inside a week.

This guide covers the private limited company (Pvt Ltd), which is what essentially every technology business and every company that intends to raise investment should register as. It also covers the three things people forget until they matter: tax registration, the PSEB concession on IT export revenue, and getting a bank account that can actually receive foreign payments.

What a private limited company requires

• Minimum two shareholders and two directors. The same two people can hold both roles, so two individuals is the practical floor. (A single-member company is a separate structure with different filing requirements.)
• Minimum paid-up capital of PKR 100,000. This is not a deposit that gets locked away — it is your company’s capital, usable as working capital once the bank account is open.
• A registered office address in Pakistan. It must be a real address capable of receiving correspondence; SECP and FBR both send things there.
• Digital signatures for each subscriber, obtained through NIFT during the eServices process.

Step 1 — Reserve the name

Create a free account at eservices.secp.gov.pk using an email address and CNIC. Submit your preferred company name for reservation. The online fee is PKR 200.

Approval typically comes back in one to three working days. An approved name is reserved for 60 days, which is your window to complete incorporation.

Names get rejected more often than people expect. The usual causes are deceptive similarity to an existing registered company, use of restricted words (anything implying government affiliation, or terms like "bank", "insurance", "investment" without the relevant licence), and names implying a scale or business you are not in. Submitting alternatives in priority order saves a round trip.

Step 2 — File the incorporation application

With the name reserved, file the incorporation documents through the same portal:

1. 1Memorandum of Association — states the company’s objects, i.e. what it is permitted to do. Draft this broadly enough to cover what you will do in three years, not just what you do on day one.
2. 2Articles of Association — the internal rulebook: share transfers, board mechanics, meetings. SECP’s standard table works for most companies; take legal advice if you have a co-founder arrangement worth protecting.
3. 3Form for particulars of directors — names, CNIC/passport numbers, addresses, nationalities.
4. 4Registered office address notification.
5. 5Digital signatures for each subscriber via NIFT.

For online filing at the minimum authorised capital of PKR 100,000, total SECP government fees come to roughly PKR 2,000–2,500. The fee scales with authorised capital, so do not inflate authorised capital beyond what you need — it costs money at registration and again on every later increase. Online filing is cheaper and faster than physical submission at every step.

Straightforward applications are typically processed in one to three working days. Allowing for name reservation and any queries raised, three to seven business days end to end is a realistic plan.

Step 3 — Tax registration with FBR

Incorporation gives you a legal entity, not a tax identity. Register the company with the Federal Board of Revenue through the IRIS portal to obtain its National Tax Number (NTN). Sales tax registration is separate and depends on what you sell and where.

Do this immediately. The bank will ask for the NTN before opening a corporate account, and the PSEB registration below depends on it.

Step 4 — PSEB registration, if you export IT services

This is the step that most directly affects a technology company’s economics. Registering with the Pakistan Software Export Board gives IT and IT-enabled services exporters access to a concessional tax rate on export revenue — currently 0.25%, against the ordinary corporate rate.

PSEB now lists over 26,000 registered companies. Registration also matters for credibility with overseas clients and for access to sector programmes. If your revenue comes from foreign clients paying for software or services, this is not optional bookkeeping — it is the difference between a viable margin and a poor one.

Step 5 — Open a corporate bank account

Take the Certificate of Incorporation, Memorandum and Articles, NTN certificate, board resolution authorising the account, and CNICs of directors and signatories to the bank.

The question worth asking upfront, which people routinely skip: can this account receive international wire transfers and what does it cost? Not every branch handles foreign inward remittance smoothly. If your customers are overseas, that capability is the account’s primary purpose. Ask about the process for booking export proceeds and the documentation the bank will require each time.

What it actually costs

The headline is that SECP’s own fees are trivial — a few thousand rupees. When people quote six-figure formation costs, they are quoting a service provider’s fee, not the state’s.

If you are not resident in Pakistan

Non-residents can be directors and shareholders. You will use passport details rather than a CNIC, and you should expect additional verification. Overseas Pakistanis have a materially easier route via the Roshan Digital Account framework, which since March 2026 has also been extended to foreign nationals and foreign companies.

The banking and repatriation mechanics are the part that deserves real attention, and we cover them in how overseas Pakistanis can invest back home.

After incorporation: the things that catch people out

• Annual returns. SECP requires an annual filing. Missing it accrues penalties quietly until they are not quiet.
• Income tax returns. Filed with FBR annually regardless of whether the company traded.
• Registered office changes must be notified to SECP within the prescribed period.
• Share transfers and director changes are filings, not private agreements. An unfiled cap table change is a real problem during due diligence.
• Documenting export proceeds. Keep the paperwork for every inward remittance from day one. Reconstructing it later, when you need it for a tax position or a diligence process, is painful.

Choosing the structure

A sole proprietorship is faster and cheaper and is the right answer for a freelancer testing whether a business exists. It is the wrong answer the moment you have a co-founder, want to hire, want to raise, or want liability separated from your personal assets. Converting later is possible but is more work than starting correctly.

If there is any chance of outside investment, register a private limited company. Investors do not buy into proprietorships.