Building National Payment Infrastructure
Partner track record — Ali Abbas Sikander, Founder and Chairman, Paysys Labs
1. Context
Most fintech businesses are built on top of payment rails somebody else owns. A smaller number build the rails.
Paysys Labs was incorporated in 2016 to do the second. Rather than compete for consumers or merchants, it positioned itself as the technical layer beneath the market: the switching, acquiring, wallet, card management and payment gateway infrastructure that banks and fintechs run on, and the subject matter expertise that regulators draw on when designing national systems.
This is a materially different business from a consumer fintech. The customer is a bank, a switch or a central bank. The sales cycle is long, the integration burden is high, and the reliability expectation is absolute, because when national payment infrastructure fails it fails for everyone at once. In exchange, the position is durable in a way consumer propositions rarely are.
2. Mandate
Founder and Chairman. Ali Abbas Sikander had previously been a founding member of Tameer Microfinance Bank as Group Executive Director for Operations and Technology, where he led the mobile banking initiative that became Easypaisa. Paysys applied that operating experience to the infrastructure layer.
3. What the work involved
National instant payments. Acting as subject matter expert and technical consultant on the design and implementation of RAAST, Pakistan’s inclusive instant payment system, and on BUNA and RAAST for cross-border payments in 2020. RAAST is the country’s real-time retail payment rail and the foundation for interoperable person-to-person, person-to-merchant and government-to-person payments.
Core market infrastructure. A 2021 engagement with the State Bank of Pakistan providing consulting on Real Time Gross Settlement and Central Securities Depository platform migration. RTGS is the settlement backbone for the banking system, and migrating it is among the highest-consequence technology programmes a central bank undertakes.
Merchant acceptance at national scale. Launching the 1GO Raast person-to-merchant service in collaboration with 1LINK and RAAST, giving merchants dynamic and static QR acceptance, request-to-pay now and later, and bulk request-to-pay processing. Merchant acceptance is the step that converts an instant payment rail from a transfer utility into a genuine alternative to cash.
A product platform for financial institutions. Building a modular suite covering connectivity, access control, acquiring, wallet, card management, digital channels, remittance, credit, fraud and risk management, and payments, delivered as licensed software, software-as-a-service and gateway-as-a-service.
Institutional partnerships. Building relationships across banks, switches and international networks, including National Bank of Pakistan in 2017, UnionPay International in 2019, EthSwitch in Ethiopia in 2020, Mashreq in 2023, and subsequent partnerships including Raqami Islamic Digital Bank, Bank Islami and Bank Makramah.
4. Outcome
Paysys Labs became one of the technical partners underpinning Pakistan’s national payments modernisation, working directly with the central bank on instant payments, cross-border payments and settlement infrastructure, while operating commercially as an infrastructure provider to banks and digital banks in Pakistan and beyond.
The strategic point is the position itself. By building the layer that banks and regulators depend on, rather than a consumer brand competing for attention, the business became infrastructure. Every new digital bank, wallet or merchant acquirer entering the market is a potential customer rather than a competitor.
5. What this means for a client
Instant payment rails change the economics of every product above them. Once a national real-time rail exists and merchant acceptance is solved, interchange-based revenue models come under pressure. Institutions that have not modelled that shift are planning against economics that are already eroding.
Interoperability is a policy outcome, not a technical one. Systems like RAAST work because the central bank mandates participation and standards. Institutions should plan for the regulator’s roadmap, not merely react to it, because the sequence of mandates determines when their existing revenue lines are affected.
Infrastructure positions are defensible; consumer positions usually are not. In a market where consumer acquisition is expensive and loyalty is thin, supplying the rails is a more durable position than competing on the surface. This is a genuine strategic option for institutions that already hold licences, switching capability or a technology estate and have been treating them as cost centres.
Central bank programmes need vendors who understand the regulated operating model. RTGS migration and instant payment implementation fail on governance, resilience and change control far more often than on code. The capability required is as much regulatory as technical.
6. Relevant capability
National payment system design, instant payments and RAAST implementation, real-time gross settlement and securities settlement infrastructure, merchant acquiring and QR acceptance, switching and interoperability, cross-border payments, and central bank and regulator advisory.
This case study describes a partner’s experience with a company he founded and chairs. It draws on publicly reported facts and company disclosures. Paysys Labs is not a client of Leap Associates, and the partner’s continuing interest in it should be disclosed where relevant.