Pakistan's Digital Bridge: NayaPay's Leap into Global Commerce

SINGAPORE – December 10, 2025 – A quiet but significant shift is reshaping how Pakistan connects with the global economy. In a move that extends far beyond a simple feature update, NayaPay, one of Pakistan’s fastest-growing fintech platforms, has activated global QR payments through a landmark collaboration with Alipay+, Ant International's cross-border payment gateway. This partnership enables millions of NayaPay users to scan and pay at a vast network of international merchants, effectively building a digital bridge between Pakistan’s local economy and the world stage. While seemingly a matter of consumer convenience, this development is a powerful indicator of Pakistan's accelerating digital transformation and a new chapter in financial mobility for its citizens and businesses.

The collaboration goes beyond surface-level integration. It plugs Pakistani consumers directly into an ecosystem of over 90 million merchants spanning more than 50 countries, covering everything from retail and dining to transport and healthcare. For the average Pakistani traveling abroad for study, business, or leisure, this fundamentally changes the experience of managing money across borders.

Deconstructing the Digital Handshake

For decades, international payments for many in emerging markets have been a landscape defined by friction. High transaction fees, opaque currency conversion rates, and the reliance on physical credit cards or cumbersome bank transfers have been the norm. The NayaPay-Alipay+ integration aims to dismantle these barriers with a deceptively simple solution: the QR code.

By using their familiar NayaPay app, travelers can now make instant payments just as they would at home. This model promises not only greater convenience but also enhanced cost-efficiency. Digital wallet-to-wallet transactions through integrated networks like Alipay+ often bypass the traditional correspondent banking systems that add layers of cost. While competitors like SadaPay have also made strides in offering transparent international transaction fees, the sheer scale of the Alipay+ merchant network gives this partnership a distinct and powerful advantage. It represents a leap from niche utility to widespread global acceptance.

“When we started NayaPay, our ambition was to give Pakistanis the same freedom and confidence with money that people enjoy in the world’s most advanced markets,” said Danish A. Lakhani, CEO of NayaPay, in the announcement. “This step brings us closer, not only by making payments abroad seamless but by making them universally accessible and easy on the pocket.”

NayaPay's Gambit in a Fierce Fintech Arena

This global expansion is a bold strategic gambit for NayaPay within Pakistan's increasingly crowded and dynamic fintech arena. The market is dominated by established mobile money giants like JazzCash and Easypaisa, which boast massive user bases built on domestic payments and remittances. However, their international focus has predominantly been on facilitating the receipt of funds from abroad.

NayaPay’s move strategically pivots to address the other side of the equation: empowering users to spend globally. By enabling outbound payments on a massive scale, the company is carving out a crucial niche and differentiating itself from competitors. This isn't just about serving tourists; it's about capturing the market of students studying overseas, freelancers interacting with international clients, and small businesses sourcing goods from other countries. The platform's recent recognition on both the Forbes Asia 100 to Watch list and the CB Insights Fintech 100 underscores its rapid ascent and the industry’s confidence in its trajectory. This partnership solidifies its evolution from a domestic payment utility to a comprehensive global financial tool.

A Blueprint Fueled by National Ambition

NayaPay's international leap is not happening in a vacuum. It is enabled and amplified by a deliberate, forward-looking regulatory environment cultivated by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP). The central bank has been a key architect of the nation's digital finance revolution, implementing critical infrastructure and policies that create fertile ground for innovation.

Initiatives like Raast, Pakistan's instant payment system, have laid the groundwork for real-time, low-cost domestic transactions. Furthermore, the SBP’s frameworks for Electronic Money Institutions (EMIs) and its introduction of a Digital Banking Framework have opened the door for new players like NayaPay to thrive. With ambitious goals to push the digital payments sector to $36 billion by 2025 and increase adult financial inclusion to 75% by 2028, the SBP has signaled strong support for technologies that can help achieve these targets.

The NayaPay-Alipay+ partnership is a direct manifestation of this vision. It demonstrates how a supportive regulatory environment can empower local fintech champions to integrate with global systems, effectively leapfrogging legacy infrastructure and accelerating the nation’s economic inclusion on a global scale.

A Key Piece in Alipay+'s Global Puzzle

Zooming out, this collaboration is also a textbook example of Alipay+'s global strategy. Unlike a consumer-facing super-app that seeks to conquer markets one user at a time, Alipay+ operates as a technology and infrastructure partner. Its model is to build a worldwide payment network by connecting local digital wallet champions—like GCash in the Philippines, Kakao Pay in South Korea, and now NayaPay in Pakistan—to a unified global merchant base.

This approach allows Ant International to expand its footprint efficiently, leveraging the user bases and local market expertise of its partners. For Alipay+, Pakistan represents a strategically vital market: a populous nation with a youthful demographic and rapidly growing digital adoption. By integrating NayaPay, it gains access to this promising ecosystem without needing to build a consumer brand from scratch.

As Pan Yan, Head of Strategic Partnership Office for Alipay+, Ant International, noted, “The growth of mobile platforms like NayaPay is transforming how millions of people travel and interact with local merchants.” This partnership is the next logical step in their mission to create an interoperable global payment layer.

The convergence of local innovation, regulatory foresight, and a global platform's strategic expansion is creating a powerful new economic reality. This single partnership serves as a compelling blueprint for how other emerging economies can dismantle long-standing barriers to global commerce. The ability for a Pakistani student to seamlessly buy a coffee in Seoul or a small business owner to pay a supplier in Dubai with their local app is no longer a distant concept but a present-day capability, fundamentally altering the calculus of economic participation.