Akhtar Fuiou Technologies is a part of Akhtar Group (“AG”), which is a large Business Group having diverse Interests ranging from beverages, to sugar, ethanol, steel, carbon dioxide and textile industries. The group is well known for its sugar-related entities.
Over time, AG has partnered with Fuiou Payment Service Corporation (“Fuiou Pay”) payment platform in Shanghai and Jollychic e-commerce platform in Hangzhou.
Fuiou Pay is one of the largest payment service providers in China, processing transactions of up to US$200 billion (2/3 of Pakistan’s GDP) and US$15 billion of incoming remittances (half of the domestic remittances processed by Pakistan in FY 2021 were received). annually.
Meanwhile, Jollychic is the second largest e-commerce platform in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates with a gross merchandise value (“GMV”) of US$1 billion. Both groups are collaborating with AG on their new financial technology platform called Akhtar Fuiou Technologies (“AFT”), which recently received a Major Approval (“IPA”) from the State Bank of Pakistan (“SBP”), licensed by Money Corporation (“EMI”) . “) It has. ).
AG’s has been shifting towards technology based Dynamics beyond building a digital payment platform. The group aims to use its network in China to partner with China’s leading social media app, e-commerce platform, smartphone manufacturer and electric vehicle aggregator to create an innovation-based synergistic ecosystem that will appeal to the group and help the country’s transition. to the new economy.
Capitalizing on the UnBanked
AFT aims to expand its portfolio user base by providing cloud-based payroll solutions to agricultural businesses in rural areas where the majority of the population is unbanked, ultimately digitizing, documenting and simplifying the entire value chain in these sectors.
AFT will provide its users with debit cards and merchant terminals to retailers to create a digital payments ecosystem. Wallet use cases include cross-border money transfers, interbank money transfers, utility bill payments, healthcare and education bill payments, QR code payments, online shopping, ATM cash withdrawals, and point-of-sale cashback.
SBP’s goal to ten-fold increase the number of POS terminals from 50,000 to 500,000 over the next two years creates a profitable opportunity for AFT to enter the acquisition market by providing commercial services for the acquisition and sale of POS equipment and software offered by banks.
AFT has partnership with Fuiou Pay which has extensive experience in the payments industry, providing bulk fundraising services for some of the largest multinational banks such as HSBC and payment processing services for companies such as Amazon.
AFT’s target market is the unbanked rural population of Pakistan who is either employed or associated with an industry based on agricultural commodities. Only 21 percent of Pakistan’s population has access to financial services, of which 13 percent have bank accounts and 8 percent have mobile wallets.
Most of the population with access to financial services works in the country’s urban areas, which make up only 40 percent of the country’s population. In addition, sectors in which AG has gained size and influence are related to the production of agricultural products, which provide a source of income for the unbanked rural population.
AFT uses a multi-vector strategy to promote its services. To grow wallet user base, it intend to roll out payroll service to industries where AG has scale and influence and create viable use cases for active wallet users.
It also want to leverage AG’s FMCG Dealer network to help install PoS terminals in strategic locations where usage can be higher, while building portfolios that will help digitize the supply chain from distributor to retailer. In addition, it intend to partner with payment card schemes to issue branded debit cards.
Future is the Digital Bank
The EMI license alone does not allow fintech to operate as a digital bank. The long-term vision is to become a fully digital financial institution. It could evaluate schemes such as Buy Now, Pay Later (“BNPL”), which have been successful in China, and demonstrate synergy with the e-commerce platform he intends to launch.
In the long run, It will initiate the transition from an EMI to a digital bank and obtain the appropriate license from SBP so that it can start lending and provide other financial services to meet demand and offer innovative solutions for consumers, merchants and the self-employed.
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