Finja Becomes Pakistan’s First Fintech to Win Commercial EMI Pilot Approval from State Bank of Pakistan

SBP green signalled Finja to commercially pilot the all new Finja App, a one stop digital platform for businesses, merchants and consumers on April 9th 2020.

This move makes Finja the first non-banking entity in Pakistan to own a consumer facing brand that allows the fintech to solicit customer deposits, plug into the country's payment plumbing, authenticate and onboard new users and white label products and services for FIs and various other institutions and corporates, with minimal reliance or interdependence on incumbent banks.  

   

Finja, in anticipation of Pakistan transforming into a virtual work space, quickly leveraged its EMI status and managed to upgrade and retool it’s new-age payments platform called “Finja Business”.  Under the new design, institutions and corporates can now sign up instantly without any paperwork or face-to-face meetings and manage essential business operations such as payments, disbursements, e-invoicing/collections for their employees, vendors, suppliers, partners and clients. Additionally, businesses can also conduct tax calculations, manage employee leaves and attendance and enjoy real time reporting and analytics.

  

Built on top of the EMI payment plumbing, Finja Business portal is now compatible with all bank accounts and wallets in the country and is not just limited to disbursements or collections into the Finja App.  Till date, more than a thousand businesses have made disbursements close to PKR 10 billion using the portal already. 

Moreover, Finja app is focused on digitizing the Karyana store or the local corner store network as an underserved segment in the market which also struggled to maintain inventory during the pandemic led lockdown peaks in the country. Finja through its partnership with multiple FMCGs (fast moving consumer goods companies) and their distributors has already crafted relationships with over 4,000 merchants in multiple cities and have extended short term digital loans of over RS 500 million to this segment at the back of using it’s NBFC (Non-Banking Financial corporation) status.

 

With an NBFC licence by SECP already bagged and now a pilot approval to launch Finja App under the EMI regime by the SBP; Finja occupies a unique position in the value chain to partner and collaborate with commercial and microfinance banks, upcoming DFIs (Digital Financial Institutions), FMCGs, distributors, merchants and other cross industry incumbents all in dire need to digitize their operations and value propositions to stay relevant in these changing times.  

Finja was co-founded by Qasif Shahid, Monis Rahman and Umer Munawar in 2016 and is backed by leading global venture capital funds including Sweden based Vostok Emerging Finance, BeeNext of Japanese origin, and Washington based Quona Capital.