ISLAMABAD: JazzCash, a subsidiary of VEON Ltd, has opened an AI Foundry and a state-of-the-art usability testing lab at its Islamabad headquarters, establishing a new capability to combine artificial intelligence, advanced customer research and rapid prototyping in the development of its financial products and services. The facility’s opening coincides with the tenth anniversary of the JazzCash consumer app.
The facility was inaugurated by Kaan Terzioglu, Group CEO of VEON; Ahmet Kayhan, Chief Payments and Digital Assets Officer, VEON; Aamir Ibrahim, Chairman of JazzCash; Murtaza Ali, CEO of JazzCash and Haaris Chaudhary, CEO of Mobilink Bank. The event marked ten years of the JazzCash platform and set out its direction for the next phase of growth.
The facility uses first of its kind eye tracking technology to record where users look, what captures their attention and where they pause or struggle as they move through a digital product, capturing friction that customers often cannot put into words in an interview or survey. The lab grade setup goes beyond traditional tools more commonly used for user testing locally, giving JazzCash researchers frame by frame data on customer behaviour. Product managers use that data to test features and customer journeys directly with users, catching usability problems and validating fixes before rollout.
The inauguration was marked by a ceremony in Islamabad that brought together JazzCash’s partners, customers and employees to mark the anniversary and set out the platform’s next phase. What began as a basic money transfer and bill payment service has grown into a platform serving 62 million customers and the country’s largest digital payment acceptance network with 1.7 million Raast enabled QR merchants, a digital lending platform issuing more than 224,000 loans a day, an Insurtech and an online payment gateway, culminating this year in its listing as the first and only Pakistani fintech on CNBC and Statista’s World’s Top Fintech Companies ranking.
Kaan Terzioglu, CEO of VEON Group, said: “JazzCash began by serving customers who had never had access to formal financial services. Today, together with Mobilink Bank, it is VEON’s largest digital financial services platform. Connectivity and the digital services built on it, financial services chief among them, are how we deliver on our purpose of a better life for all. The AI Foundry is how we keep the platform close to customers as their needs evolve.”
Murtaza Ali, CEO of JazzCash, said: “Ten years gets you the infrastructure. The AI Foundry is how we make sure the next ten build something people actually need, letting the smallest shopkeeper build a storefront of their own, opening up new ways to save and invest, reaching the next person the formal economy hasn’t gotten to yet.”
The AI Foundry will be a permanent part of how it builds products through its second decade, testing directly with customers before features reach the platform’s userbase.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2026