Invisible Giant
Tens of millions banked from a phone, not a branch.
In the Global South, the account does not wait for the branch. It arrives on the phone already in the pocket.
When the account has to travel to the branch, most of a country stays outside it.
Easypaisa and JazzCash inverted that in Pakistan, turning the mobile line into the account and the corner shop into the counter. Easypaisa alone now counts around 50 million registered users, roughly one in four adults and one in four of them women, part of some 80 million active mobile wallet accounts nationwide. In January 2025 the central bank licensed Easypaisa as the country's first digital retail bank.
The decision that mattered: reach people through the phone they already held, not the branch they never entered.
In the Global South, the account arrives in the pocket first.
Source: State Bank of Pakistan, 2024-2025.