NayaPay is looking for new ways to grow and raise funds

NayaPay, Pakistan’s first electronic money institution, will build a super-app for digital payments and business financial management based on chat.

NayaPay has acquired USD 13 million in investment to launch a super-app for texting and digital payments in Pakistan. NayaPay’s seed round was the highest in South Asia, exceeding the USD 12 million obtained by Tag, a Pakistani banking and financial services start-up, in September 2021.

After receiving an e-money license from the State Bank of Pakistan in September 2021, NayaPay became Pakistan’s first fintech. The firm is now well-positioned to begin selling mobile financial services (MFS) solutions.

The commercial side of NayaPay’s super-app is a chat-based platform, similar to other chat-based systems offered in Asia such as WeChat Pay and AliPay, and is particularly targeted towards Pakistan’s vast mobile-first young demographic. Consumers will be able to create an account and digital wallet on their mobile phone using their Computerised National Identity Card as proof of ID, and a virtual Visa debit card will be linked to the account for online transactions once it is registered. Fitch Solutions claims that NayaPay is definitely targeted at increasing financial inclusion in the country in this way.

It’s worth noting that, according to the 2017 World Bank Global Findex Report, only 21% of the population has a bank account, leaving a sizable market for fintech apps to tap into.

Pakistan’s increasing mobile penetration and smartphone use help to provide a favourable atmosphere for MFS adoption. Pakistan’s mobile penetration rate is expected to reach 81.8 percent by the end of September 2021, according to the agency’s forecasts, indicating that there is still plenty of space for organic development. According to the paper, “our mobile market predictions see the country’s mobile penetration rate expanding to approximately 91 percent (242 million users) by the end of 2031.”

According to the most recent data from Pakistan’s Central Bank, the country has approximately 9.9 million mobile money accounts at the end of March 2021, up from 5 million two years prior. While these numbers show that just 5.4 percent of Pakistan’s mobile phone users have a mobile money account, the growing popularity of MFS speaks well for the adoption of fintech platforms like NayaPay.

According to Fitch Solutions, Pakistan’s poor degree of financial inclusion extends to the business sector, with many SMEs underserved. NayaPay aims to incorporate its own business software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform NayaPay Arc, which will give SMEs universal payments acceptance and financial management capabilities, using the funds acquired in early fundraising.

NayaPay is expected to add more advanced fintech products into its super-app in the long future, starting with investment/savings tools and small-scale loans, according to the credit rating agency. The latter of these sectors will be especially well-suited to NayaPay’s existing enterprise offering, as it will allow SMEs to apply for business loans.

These applications, on the other hand, are more sophisticated than NayaPay’s existing MFS offering, according to the research, and ongoing investment will be required to develop these products as well as acquire the appropriate technology. Given that artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics solutions are especially effective for analyzing credit risk, it is expected that NayaPay would actively pursue collaborations with other SaaS providers or firms that offer them.