Last December, our friends at Mashreq became the first to receive a restricted license from the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) to begin pilot operations as a digital retail bank. This expanded Mashreq’s operations to 14 countries, with the lender poised to offer digital and Islamic banking services in the country this year, with a view to onboard mns of customers over the next five years.

The bank has been operating on a pilot basis — offering banking services to bank employees and their families — for the past six months, and is looking to receive the greenlight from the SBP to begin commercial operations sometime this year, following the completion of the review of their pilot operations.

We spoke with Mashreq Pakistan’s CEO Muhammad Hamayun Sajjad (LinkedIn) about the size of the potential in Pakistan — home to nearly 250 mn people — as well as the challenges of bringing digital banking to a still heavily cashbased economy. Edited excerpts from our conversation:

Enterprise: Why did Mashreq choose Pakistan for its latest post in Asia? And why now?

MS: Pakistan has 55 financial institutions, as of June 2024, from fintechs, to microfinance, to large, conventional banks, and we have decent digital penetration in terms of smartphones, access to the Internet, and social media. We are a fairly digitally ready country. But the banking sector is still at a nascent stage in terms of digital offerings.

Out of more than 90 mn depositors, we have 18.7 mn mobile app banking users and 12 mn Internet banking users in Pakistan. The real challenge remains that most of the digital banking users are still underserved and in case of an issue, they look for a contact or relationship at their bank to help resolve their complaints.

Can you imagine opening a bank account in the good old days, getting your checkbook to write a check, and the bank tells you you can only write a check for up to PKR 200? Digital banking in Pakistan currently restricts users to transferring limited funds per day. There are daily, weekly, monthly, and even yearly limits, and people are struggling trying to even remember those limits, track their transactions, and monitor how much of their limits they’ve used up. These restrictions have caused customers to experience constant friction and a lack of trust in digital banking in Pakistan.

The SBP’s statistics show that paper-based transactions have seen a decline in volume but an increase in value of more than 50% to PKR 447.7 tn in FY 2024, indicating higher-value transactions being conducted through paper-based methods even now. We also have more than 18k bank branches in the country. There were more than 750 branches added in just one year, between FY2023 and FY2024. And banks are still opening branches.

We want to be the torchbearer of the digital banking evolution in Pakistan. We are the only global bank in Pakistan with a history of over 50 years, coming into the market as a digital-first, cloud-enabled platform to catalyze the future of banking in Pakistan. The bank was live in a record time of less than 18 months, with less than 115 employees and no physical branches.

Enterprise: What’s your strategy when entering the market? What types of clients will you be targeting?

MS: Our strategy for targeting customers is two-fold: a) To bring banking solutions to financially excluded Pakistanis and b) Target the existing digital banking customers who are underserved.

We understand the challenges tech-savvy digital banking customers in Pakistan face with digital banking as it stands today. They understand how mobile applications work, and how digital onboarding works, but they’re struggling with the existing banking experiences on offer. Leveraging Mashreq’s seamless globally benchmarked digital banking capabilities, we aim to give these customers superior experiences that are safer, simpler and centered on their needs and preferences.

We believe creating such experiences would naturally make them our advocates and proponents for the other underserved and financially excluded segments of society. People move from rural areas to cities for work, and they become increasingly accustomed to more digital lifestyles. And when they go back home during vacations to their families, they take that lifestyle and expand their trust and learnings to others back at home. That’s a big part of the literacy transition happening in Pakistan.

E: With Pakistan shifting all of its banking services to an Islamic model by 2028, how is Mashreq preparing for the transition?

MS: There has been a huge inclination for the past 10 years in Pakistan towards Islamic banking, and the primary driver for that is the ethical, transparent, and fair banking that customers believe Islamic banking offers.

Mashreq in the UAE operates an Islamic banking window. Our advanced digital capabilities have set a benchmark in the global Islamic banking industry, and we are excited to bring the same level of excellence to our operations in Pakistan.

We are poised to be an Islamic-first digital bank in the country, bringing a truly end-to-end pure Islamic digital banking experience to Pakistan that is easy, transparent and accessible for all. For the first time, customers can open an Islamic banking account from anywhere in the country, within minutes, and manage their finances fully online without visiting a branch.

E: What about your strategy from an operational perspective — what products and services do you plan to focus on in the first few years of operations?

MS: As an international digital leader, we are committed to bringing in several of our global award-winning, pioneering digital-first solutions like Mashreq NEO, NEOBiz, and NEO NXT. Mashreq NEO was the first in the UAE to provide access to international markets for investments, including foreign equities, gold trading and foreign currency accounts. Today, NEO has expanded its presence beyond UAE, to Egypt and now to Pakistan — giving Pakistanis, for the first time, access to a full-service and fully digital banking platform.

We also envision integrating Mashreq NEO NXT into our offerings to cater to the youth’s digital fluency. Mashreq NEO NXT offers a seamless, mobile-first experience with engaging, age-appropriate financial literacy tools for Generation NXT (ages 8-18).

Our ultimate goal is to build trust in our bank in a country where people currently think of digital as a ‘wallet’ — they think digital banking is for small payments and real banking happens in branches. So, when we launch commercially, we aim to launch as a bank rather than as a digital bank, so we can build that holistic understanding and trust in our brand.

One of the top priority areas is home remittances. Pakistan saw USD 30.3 bn in remittances in FY2024 alone, and that’s forecast to jump to USD 35 bn in FY2025. Despite this, the process of getting remittances in the country is still inconvenient — a significant percentage of remittances are received over-the-counter.

We are very well-placed given our presence in the UAE, which is the second largest remittance corridor for Pakistan, with close to USD 6 bn in remittances last year, of which Mashreq contributes to around 7.3% of volumes. We are also present in all the major international hubs where Pakistanis are present, and we are launching some unique remittance products and services that do not exist in the country today.

The second is a focus on small and medium enterprises. Full-service digital banks focused on SMEs are not as common as they should be. When small and medium enterprises adopt digital banking, their business grows, they are able to engage in more B2B and B2C flows, and they participate in the economy by creating more jobs.

SMEs today in Pakistan are highly underserved. They can only open their banking relationship in the branch, and there is no digital onboarding offered by banks. There is also no digital channel; banks give them access to an individual banking app, and they are given complex corporate and large enterprise banking portals. Mashreq is bringing a dedicated new business SME banking platform to the country backed by the knowledge and success it has witnessed in the UAE.

In the UAE, Mashreq is also piloting several SME-focused initiatives, including unsecured lending, soft tokens, and expanded trade financing solutions through its full-service SME digital banking proposition, Mashreq NEOBiz. Following piloting and regulatory approvals, we are preparing to launch NEOBiz in Egypt this year. Pakistan will follow closely.

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