Karandaaz Pakistan, under its Pilot to Scale Program has partnered with Haball, a B2B financial technology company, to run a project that proves the significance of digitizing all supply nodes in the retail value chain for higher acceptance of digital payments.
Under this particular grant, Haball, in collaboration with a corporate entity and branchless banking wallet provider will digitize an entire value chain enabling distributors and their retailers to order and make payments digitally from manufacturers to end-consumers.
For the purposes of the pilot, Haball will create an ecosystem where payments are made digitally from corporate to retailer level and vice versa. Since retailers will be enabled with digital wallets for making value chain payments, this, in turn, will help them receive payments digitally as well, and the end-consumers will also be able to make digital payments for everyday household items.
Ali Sarfraz, CEO Karandaaz Pakistan said, “Karandaaz is currently running multiple programs to support the digital financial services sector of Pakistan and build models and solutions for the financial inclusion of the unbanked and underbanked population. In addition to empowering those who do not have an account, we have specific programs that target the underbanked population with pilots that introduce financial deepening to such segments.”
Rehan Akhtar, Chief Digital Officer of Karandaaz Pakistan said, “The categories for Pilot to Scale projects have emerged based on the learnings from the past interventions undertaken by Karandaaz in partnership with the private industry from 2016 to 2019 and the white spaces in the market.”
Speaking about the significance of this grant, Omer Bin Ahsan, CEO Haball said, “Partnership with Karandaaz is to achieve mutual goals that are financial inclusion and promotion of digital payments by integrating tightly into each value chain. We are also leveraging our partnership with Karandaaz to involve relevant financial institutions to integrate with the value chain directly.