Left to Right: Sohail Javaad (Director Payment Systems SBP), Raza Baqir (Governor of State Bank of Pakistan), Qasif Shahid (Co-Founder & CEO Finja), Monis Rahman (Co-Founder & Director Finja)

Finja, the trail blazing Pakistani fintech behind the popular SimSim mobile wallet launched in partnership with Finca Microfinance Bank, announced today that it has received an in-principle approval from the State Bank of Pakistan for an Electronic Money Institution (EMI). The EMI license will allow Finja to aggressively expand its operations by forging a fresh set of partnerships and interconnects with select banks and ecosystem partners in the rapidly evolving digital financial services landscape of the country.

“This in-principle approval will enable Finja to increase speed of service delivery and accelerate scale to digitize Pakistan’s workforce and business transactions,” said Qasif Shahid, Co-Founder and CEO of Finja.


Finja has a special focus on salaried individuals and the businesses that employ them. In a short span of time the company has digitized payroll disbursement, payment collections and instant loans for thousands of organizations and their employees. Finja has well over half a million mobile app led wallets with the highest average balance in the industry. The company is backed by leading global venture capital funds including Vostok Emerging Finance, BeeNext and Quona Capital.