Adnan Ali

Early life and background

Adnan Ali was born and raised in Karachi. He grew up in a family with many bankers and wanted to become a banker himself. His uncle worked as a banker. [1]

Education

Ali attended a school that was near his home. To move toward banking, he felt a commerce route was better and completed a B.Com first. He also completed an MBA and earned an Oracle certification. [1]

Banking career

Ali entered banking at a bank. He then joined another bank and became head of a department there. Ali established a department from scratch and then went on a digital transformation journey that included launching internet banking and a mobile app. [1]

Ali worked in banking for about 15 to 16 years. He said he became an EVP at age 35, possibly the youngest in Pakistan at that time. He also became Chief Digital Officer and headed seven or eight departments with more than 100 staff. [1]

Leaving banking

Ali left banking at around age 37 or 38. He has said he felt the scale he wanted could not be reached inside a bank, that it was time to move on, and that he wanted to do something bigger for the economy and the country. He then joined PayFast. [1]

PayFast

Ali says that over the next four years PayFast collaborated with the State Bank on its licensing. He says PayFast is now a regulated entity and has started operating outside Pakistan. PayFast started marketing on Facebook, and Ali says its growth has been month-to-month, like a hockey stick. [1]

Ali says PayFast has a holistic solution covering accounts, credit cards and debit cards for its merchants. PayFast earns its revenue by charging merchants a service fee deducted from payments. Ali says the charge is called MDR, the merchant discount rate, and put PayFast's rate to merchants at approximately 1.5 to 2 percent. He says merchant approval takes about two days and sign-up is fully digital. Ali also says PayFast publishes more APIs than any other institution in Pakistan, and its engineering team provides a shopping cart to merchants who need one. [1]

PayFast developed an invoicing portal for freelancers. Ali says freelancers often end up paying 10 to 15 percent in fees on payments and that the portal could bring their costs down to 2 to 3 percent. Ali says PayFast merchants also take international transactions, with funds settling in Pakistan. PayFast enabled the mobile app users of a bank to create a virtual card from their account, and it has partnered with a company that Ali says aggregates at large scale. [1]

Ali says PayFast could offer merchants invoice financing based on its data, and could get an NBFI licence to offer merchants this kind of facility. He says a PSP must keep 200 million of capital at all times. [1]

Affiliations

Ali is a board member of a FinTech association. He refers to his chairman as someone who has worked in the technology business for 20 to 25 years. Ali says a group company was once Pakistan's largest IT company and that a group company is Pakistan's largest ICT company. [1]

Views

Ali says roughly 90 percent of transactions in Pakistan are still made in cash. He describes Raast as an instant payment system and a cheaper network, and says PayFast is not competing with Raast but plans to build on top of it. He says a single QR code will come within Raast, and that EasyPaisa's QR works only within its own ecosystem, while a single QR would be interoperable. In his figures, Pakistan has about 75,000 POS terminals and about 60 million smartphone users. Ali also says a BNPL provider needs a licence to scale to the masses. [1]

Ali says Pakistan's youth make up 63 percent of the population and that Pakistan has two paths it can take. He says the last 20 to 25 years were not good for Pakistan, that Pakistan did not adopt the industrial age and fell behind, and that it goes to the IMF every year. [1]

Ali says about 900,000 freelancers bring about 500 million dollars into Pakistan and that Pakistan's software exports are around 2 billion dollars. He says IT exports and freelancing could cover Pakistan's trade deficit of 20 to 25 billion dollars. He also says Pakistan has the second largest population of children who do not attend school and that about 10 crore children have not been trained. [1]

Personal life

Ali describes himself as a hustler by nature. He says he tires of monotonous work. [1]

Appearances

Frequently asked questions

References

1. Pakistan's first payment gateway wants to kill COD . Thought Behind Things , 2022-03-02.