Karachi, Pakistan – Pakistan-based fintech NayaPay has raised US$13m in one of the largest seed rounds in South Asia, which was led by Zayn Capital, global fund manager MSA Novo, and early-stage VC Graph Ventures from Silicon Valley, as well as the participation of Singapore-based Saison Capital, amongst many others.
NayaPay aims to be at the forefront in the digitisation of Pakistan with its two-sided platform for the underbanked. The fintech has launched its chat-led super app targeted primarily at students and freelancers, and is building a SaaS-based platform called NayaPay Arc offering universal payment acceptance and financial management tools for SMBs. NayaPay’s platform strategy will harness the network effects between consumers and merchants, as seen in platforms such as Square Cash/Square, WeChat Pay, and AliPay as well as Venmo in their native markets.
According to NayaPay, Pakistan presents a significant market opportunity for the platform, where over 50 million adults are unbanked and only 33% of women have a bank account. With 70% of the population under 35 years old, there is a significant mobile-first generation. It also said that almost US$4t payments are made each year but only 1% of these are made digitally currently, while on the merchant side, the majority of SMBs in Pakistan are unregistered. They only have traditionally dealt primarily in cash, and have very limited access to business banking.
Danish A. Lakhani, NayaPay’s founder and CEO, shared that micro, small and medium businesses make up 90% of the merchant base in Pakistan and yet they are underserved when it comes to access to basic financial services.
“NayaPay Arc will provide universal payments acceptance and a range of business financial management tools to empower entrepreneurs and small business owners. The tools are intended to give business owners visibility of their cash flows, pay suppliers and grow sales. Our goal is to enable them to focus on growth while we take care of the rest. By helping small businesses harness the power of technology, we believe we can transform the Pakistani economy,” said Lakhani.
Meanwhile, Faisal Aftab, Zayn Capital Frontier’s managing partner and co-founder, commented that they were impressed by the completeness of the vision of the founding team at NayaPay, and their differentiated platform-based strategy, first focused on servicing the needs of underbanked consumers and SMBs with specific use cases and building out from there.
“With a proven ability to execute on the ground, the founder has an impressive track record of building and scaling businesses in Pakistan, including the country’s largest fibre broadband service, StormFiber,” said Aftab.
Omar Siddiqui, Graph Venture’s general partner, said that they are excited to see the mobile and fintech technology trends that have empowered consumers in these markets also emerge in Pakistan.
“NayaPay already offers the most robust solution for consumers to access next-generation financial conveniences in Pakistan, and we look forward to working with the team as they roll out new products and grow their consumer base,” added Siddiqui.
