LAHORE: The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has recently selected Pakistan’s first B2B fintech company Haball through an independent and transparent bidding process to act as the Supply Chain Finance (SCF) Multibank Technology Platform Service Provider.
This milestone marks Haball’s dedicated commitment to revolutionizing Digital Supply Chain Finance and enabling credit in the SME sector in Pakistan, disclosed Haball on Monday.
It said that after careful consideration and guidance from industry leaders and State Bank officials, Haball has been chosen as a Multi-Bank Supply Chain Financing Platform by the State Bank of Pakistan.
As Pakistan’s first B2B fintech company, Haball has digitized supply chain collections for its clients and brought efficiency to their business processes.
Pakistan is home to 5.2 million SMEs; however, only 0.25 percent of the business community in Pakistan has access to digital banking services, while the majority relies on traditional brick-and-mortar operations.
“This selection aligns with the State Bank’s ongoing efforts to promote Islamic financing, especially after the recent verdict by the Federal Shariat Court on the adoption of Islamic Banking, and the prioritization by the federal government and the State Bank of Pakistan to have a structured implementation plan for riba-free banking.
By employing Islamic principles of transparency, fairness, and risk-sharing, augmented by digital supply chain entrenchment, SMEs and corporate supply chains can scale their business operations through the liquidity provided by the banks,” the company said.
Commenting on the digitization of the supply chains, Haball CEO Omer Bin Ahsan said it is a US $5 billion opportunity in the country, and roughly 1.5 percent of that value moves through financial services in a manual, broken process that takes 2-3 days for a single transaction.
“This estimate highlights the potential of the opportunity this platform can address by digitizing the supply chain financing process,” he added.
The company pointed out that Haball’s flagship product, Wisaaq, has already achieved remarkable success by empowering manufacturers and SMEs to reduce reliance on cash-based transactions and streamline the reconciliation and financing process, which is completely Shariah compliant.
Haball had processed US $21 million within five months of its commercial launch and facilitated digital collections of US $12 million in repayments, it added.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
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