Pakistan based fintech secures $13M in seed funding

NayaPay, a Pakistan based fintech has secured $13 million in one of South Asia’s largest seed investments. The round was headed by Zayn Capital, global fund manager MSA Novo, and early-stage VC Graph Ventures from Silicon Valley, and included a varied mix of notable worldwide institutional and angel investors.

The central bank has granted NayaPay the first E-Money Institution (EMI) licence. With its two-sided platform for the underbanked, it wants to make financial services more easy and accessible.

In Pakistan, where over 50 million individuals are unbanked and just 33% of women have a bank account, NayaPay sees a big market opportunity. There is a substantial mobile-first generation, with 70% of the people under 35 years old. Every year, about $4 trillion in payments are processed, yet just 1% of them are made digitally.

The fintech company released a chat-based super app aimed largely at students and freelancers, as well as a SaaS-based platform called NayaPay Arc that offers universal payment acceptance and financial management solutions for small businesses.

It aims to reach 5 million users and increase the number of digital payments in the next five years, which he claims will have an influence on other industries such as e-commerce as more people use the Pakistan based fintech NayaPay wallet to conduct online purchases.