Imran watches his sister battle bias, and three women rewrite Pakistan’s fintech story

By Ali Asadullah Shah

The hum of laptops and the clatter of coffee cups filled the co-working loft on Blue Area. Imran stood near a glass wall, his pulse quickening as Ayesha, his younger sister, cleared her throat and lifted a tablet. The investor across the table tapped his pen, eyebrows raised, as Ayesha launched into a demo of “PayShe”, a mobile wallet designed for women vendors in the outskirts of Lahore. The room smelled of fresh chai and ambition. When the investor asked, “Can women really drive adoption?” Ayesha’s smile hardened. She replied, “We already are.” Imran felt the weight of a generation watching that moment, a silent wager on gender, technology, and Pakistan’s economic future.

Why this matters now

Pakistan’s fintech sector is at a crossroads. The State Bank’s Raast network has already moved enough value in a year to give every Pakistani a dozen digital purchases. Yet women still account for less than a quarter of startup founders, even as they control a majority of informal retail. The gap is not just a social issue; it is a capital inefficiency. When women create products that serve other women, transaction volumes rise, credit risk drops, and new jobs appear in neighborhoods that have long been excluded from formal finance. The three women profiled here illustrate how that potential is turning into measurable growth, and why policymakers and investors cannot afford to ignore it.

Here's how it works:

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Payments: Sara Khan, founder of ShePay

Sara grew up in Karachi’s bustling fish market, watching her mother juggle cash and counterfeit notes. In 2021 she launched ShePay, a QR-code payment solution that works on basic feature phones as well as smartphones. The technology uses USSD to generate a code that vendors can display on a simple sticker. Customers dial the code, confirm the amount, and the money lands instantly in the vendor’s digital wallet.

Within eighteen months, ShePay processed over two million transactions, enough to fund a small school in each of the three districts where it first operated. For a shop owner like Fatima, the system means she no longer has to hide cash under a mattress, and she can track daily sales on a printed receipt that doubles as a tax record.

*Idea for founders:

• Pair a low-tech payment method with a local ambassador program. Sara recruited 150 trusted market leaders to demonstrate the USSD flow, cutting customer acquisition cost by half.

Micro-lending: Nadia Hussain, CEO of MicroMum

Nadia, a former teacher from Peshawar, saw how many women entrepreneurs could not expand because they lacked collateral. In 2020 she created MicroMum, an AI-driven micro-lending platform that scores borrowers on transaction history, mobile phone usage, and community references instead of property deeds. The algorithm draws on data from mobile wallets, utility bills, and social media activity, producing a credit score in seconds.

By the end of 2023, MicroMum had disbursed PKR 150 million to over 3,000 women, enough to fund 1,200 small sewing workshops and 800 vegetable stalls. The repayment rate sits at 96 percent, a figure that surprised even the most skeptical bank executives.

*Practical step for fintech students:

• Build a prototype that integrates at least three disparate data sources for credit scoring. Even a spreadsheet model can demonstrate the power of alternative data to potential mentors.

Digital Banking: Laila Ahmed, co-founder of DawnBank

Laila, a software engineer from Islamabad, left a senior role at a multinational bank to launch DawnBank in 2022. The digital-only bank targets gig workers and migrant families, offering zero-fee accounts, instant cross-border remittances, and a budgeting tool that visualizes cash flow in Urdu and regional languages. DawnBank partnered with the diaspora-led “PakTech Hub” incubator, securing a seed round of US$ 2 million from a UK-based impact fund.

Six months after launch, DawnBank reported that its users saved an average of PKR 4,000 per month by avoiding hidden fees, and the platform created 250 remote customer-service jobs for women in rural Sindh. The bank’s success prompted the State Bank to announce a “Women Led Fintech” grant, allocating PKR 500 million for startups that meet gender-inclusion criteria.

Concrete human outcome

When Ayesha’s PayShe QR codes appeared on the stalls of Lahore’s Anarkali market, a 45-year-old fruit seller named Saima saw her daily cash handling time drop from two hours to ten minutes. The extra minutes allowed her to enroll her teenage son in a computer class. Across the country, Sara’s vendors reported a 30 percent increase in sales after women customers began using contactless payments, citing safety and convenience. Nadia’s borrowers now employ an average of three staff, and Laila’s DawnBank users report feeling “financially respected” for the first time.

The ecosystem is shifting. Incubators such as the National Incubation Center now run women-focused cohorts, offering mentorship from diaspora entrepreneurs who have navigated Silicon Valley. Policy incentives include a reduced corporate tax rate for fintech firms that meet gender-employment targets. Still, obstacles remain: societal expectations, limited access to early-stage capital, and a regulatory language that sometimes assumes a male founder. The stories above show that when those barriers are lowered, capital flows, jobs multiply, and the narrative around women in tech rewrites itself.

The road ahead is clear: investors must allocate more funds to women-led fintech, policymakers need to codify gender-inclusive incentives, and aspiring founders should use low-tech solutions and alternative data to prove market demand.

About the author

Editor, FintechBulletins. Ali Asadullah Shah writes about fintech careers, insurtech and the regulatory side of digital finance in Pakistan. Follow on LinkedIn.