In a landmark progression for Pakistan’s downstream retail banking sector and domestic payment infrastructure, 1LINK Private Limited has announced plans to launch the country’s very first homegrown credit card under its domestic payment card scheme, PayPak. The revelation was shared by Najeeb Agrawalla, Chief Executive Officer of 1LINK, who highlighted that this upcoming rollout represents a major structural shift intended to fundamentally alter how formal credit is extended, underwritten, and utilized across various economic segments within the country.
The strategic introduction of a domestic credit facility is purposefully designed around an inclusive pay-as-you-earn financial model. This structure addresses the historic systemic barriers that have long restricted access to conventional credit cards in Pakistan, which typically cater exclusively to high-income corporate brackets or elite wealth tiers. By linking consumer borrowing capacities more fluidly to their real-time earnings and income schedules, this specialized credit framework provides commercial banking institutions with a significantly safer, highly structured mechanism to evaluate risk, thereby allowing them to onboard previously unserved consumer demographics.
The primary objective behind the upcoming launch is to bring a significantly larger number of retail banks, commercial microfinance institutions, and everyday mass-market consumers directly into the formal credit ecosystem. Historically, Pakistan’s credit card penetration has remained remarkably low due to stringent underwriting criteria, high collateral requirements, and a lack of localized credit assessment tools. By introducing a domestic scheme optimized for local economic conditions, PayPak aims to demystify formal consumer debt, lower operational overhead costs for issuing financial institutions, and foster a healthier culture of documented short-term credit utilization.
This transition into the consumer credit sector marks the next major evolutionary chapter for PayPak, which is currently celebrating its tenth year of institutional operations since its inception as Pakistan’s proprietary payment architecture. Over the last decade, the domestic payment scheme has built a highly formidable foundation, boasting more than 16.1 million active debit and prepaid cards currently in force across the nation. This expansive deployment has successfully granted the domestic scheme a commanding 28 percent market share in the country’s highly competitive plastic card landscape, illustrating robust consumer trust and seamless nationwide acceptance.
By leveraging 1LINK’s existing electronic clearing networks, interoperable automated teller machine systems, and thousands of point-of-sale merchant terminals, the PayPak credit card can scale rapidly without requiring costly supplementary hardware investments. As the State Bank of Pakistan continues to push forward with its mandatory timelines to completely digitize commercial transactions across public and private channels, the availability of a localized, affordable credit instrument is expected to act as a primary catalyst for financial inclusion. This integration not only reduces institutional dependency on expensive international payment networks but also ensures that domestic capital remains actively circulated within the local digital economy, laying the groundwork for sustainable long-term economic development.
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