NayaPay, a Karachi-headquartered fintech, has raised $13 million in a seed round co-led by Zayn Capital, MSA Novo, and VC Graph Ventures.
Other participants in the deal included Singapore’s Saison Capital, Waleed Saigol’s Maple Leaf Capital, and Warren Hogarth, CEO of Empower Finance, alongside a major investment from the sponsors of the Lakson Group.
NayaPay was the first of the three Electronic Money Institutions to have received approval for commercial operations from the State Bank of Pakistan, which it obtained on August 30, 2021.
“Pakistan presents a significant market opportunity for NayaPay, 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. Almost $4 trillion payments are made each year but only 1% of these are made digitally currently. On the merchant side, the majority of SMBs in Pakistan are unregistered, have traditionally dealt primarily in cash, and have very limited access to business banking,” a press statement issued by the company said.
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 is empowering young Pakistani adults starting their financial journey, from students stepping into adulthood to freelancers and entrepreneurs taking an active role in managing their finances. In many senses, it’s a coming-of-age moment for many and our goal is to continue to innovate and build functionality to become a part of their daily lives, for the rest of their lives.”
Faisal Aftab, Managing Partner and Co-Founder at Zayn Capital, said, “We are very bullish on fintech in Pakistan. While just beginning to emerge, Pakistani fintechs have the advantage of learning from peers and placing better informed strategic bets. We 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 fiber broadband service (StormFiber).”
Omar Siddiqui, General Partner at Graph Ventures, added: “We are excited to partner with Danish and the NayaPay team as they scale their leading digital payments platform for consumers and merchants in Pakistan. We have been early-stage investors in 300+ companies over the past decade in the United States, Southeast Asia, and Latin America, and we 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.”
