Nineteen promising FinTechs have been bustling with excitement and morphing their raw ideas into scalable solutions as part of Karandaaz Pakistan’s FinTech Disrupt Challenge (FDC) 2018, for which Karandaaz has funded FinTech Factory to provide accelerated support to these startups According to a Karandaaz statement, judges panel comprising renowned technology and FinTech professionals will evaluate the pitches and a number of winning startups will be provided with seed money (returnable grants) to convert their ideas into reality. For three years now, Karandaaz Pakistan, the country’s top agency for promotion of financial inclusion, has been supporting extraordinary startup ideas worthy of creating substantial social impact by way of removing bottlenecks in the local financial services sector. In the third round of the FDC, Karandaaz had invited startups falling in nine thematic areas, including payments, interoperability, consumer/retail banking, regtech, insurtech, mobile wallets, loyalty programs, lending and savings. “With the financial inclusion goals of Karandaaz and the government of Pakistan converging, it gives us great satisfaction that the country’s financial services industry today appears to be more receptiveto technological innovation than ever before,” said Ali Sarfraz, CEO Karandaaz Pakistan. “It is owing to steady development in financial technology that we see encouraging numbers in adoption of formal financial services. Fintech Disrupt Challenge is one of our ways to promote FinTech in Pakistan by way of making our youth a part of the mission, and exploring and honing their sills to carve robust solutions,” he claimed. Published in Daily Times, November 8th 2018.