SimSim and FINJA Bring Lahore’s First Digital Food Street

FINJA, a Pakistani fintech, with a mission to free digital commerce in Pakistan has been making waves across town with its mobile wallet SimSim. With several highly successful shop mobs under its belt, FINJA held Lahore’s first Digital Food Street event on May 23, 2017. A treat for the food-loving Lahoris in this heat, the Digital Food Street featured food outlets Rice Bowl, Bamboo Union, Café Latch, Outpost B.Y.O.B., MOCCA, and The Delicatessen, which partnered with FINJA to create a delicious experience for users.

SimSim, a complete money management digital solution, has been co-created by FINJA and FINCA Microfinance Bank Limited. The vision behind the innovation is “free digital payments to escalate the growth of a cashless economy with ease and convenience for the users”. The creators of SimSim feel that the Pakistani economy is ready for a move towards a cashless society because the required ecosystem, i.e., regulatory framework, smartphone adoption and internet penetration, is enabling the users to quickly become educated about digital payments. The core behavior of the user can and will transform when the policy interventions support users’ lifestyle needs.

One of the several methods of raising user awareness about SimSim has been offers of disproportionate discount and subsequent value creation for users via shop mobs. The Digital Food Street on Tuesday proved that SimSim is popular not only with users but merchants as well. The FINJA team and partner merchant brands witnessed a sizeable turnout during the designated hours, and successfully attempted to make the user experience seamless. While SimSim has many useful features such as real-time IBFTs, utility bill payments from anywhere, anytime, etc., it is the QR (quick response) code payments that let users pay digitally at merchants’ without worrying about carrying physical cash or small denomination currency notes. Users log in to their application, scan the merchant’s QR code with their smartphones and the payment is immediately transferred without any cost! The user and merchant do not pay any charges that are ordinarily incurred on paying through cash or cards.

The success of any event is based on the mutual benefit of the partners. Digital Food Street showed that the merchants who had collaborated with FINJA are completely committed to offering future value to SimSim users as well. They can clearly see the benefits offered by accepting digital payments, namely, retention of existing customers, acquisition of new customers, cross-platform marketing, etc. The two-way play for FINJA and partner merchants will be where both can leverage each other’s user network to grow exponentially.