PAKISTAN has seen the largest drop in its mobile ownership and mobile internet gender gaps this past year amongst all countries surveyed by the GSMA. Mobile devices and internet are increasingly pivotal in enabling access to a wide range of services and resources, including those related to healthcare, education and credit to name just a few. Hence, mobile and internet access is of both intrinsic and instrumental significance. Indeed, evidence from across the world shows that access to and use of digital platforms and spaces has been linked with improved economic opportunities and outcomes for women. In this, fintech and broader digital financial services have been a central intervention piece. Does the same hold in Pakistan too? And what are the key channels that we need to consider and perhaps reform, if we are to fully actualise the potential of fintech towards improvements for women?

Mobile wallets, banking apps and digital financial platforms have been operating in Pakistan for some time with the digital ecosystem expanding significantly in the past two decades. Notably, basic online banking began in the late 1990s, with 2009 witnessing the introduction of the country’s first mobile money platform, and Raast, with its real-time free digital transactions across the banking sector, being launched by the State Bank in 2021. These platforms have aimed to increase financial inclusion and digitise cash. Yet, the concern has not just been the general evolution and reach of the digital financial sector but the presence of women within it.

Much of this concern has been driven by the historically low numbers of women in the financial sector. In 2015, about 10 per cent of women had bank/financial accounts. The low numbers of women in the traditional banking sector have been attributed to mobility constraints, lack of documentation and hesitation to interact with bank staff because of lower levels of literacy or due to purdah. Not only do mobility-related constraints reduce in online spaces, but lack of documentation of women in particular became less binding with the launch and spread of BISP’s programming from 2008 onward. Combined with concerted efforts by the banking sector to reach more women, today, it is estimated that 52pc of adult women have some form of financial account registered under their name. Here though, we must make a distinction between registering an account and controlling it.

A large body of economics literature separates access from control: while access to resources is crucial, it is control over these that is necessary for empowerment. Thus, while the increase in the number of women with mobile phones and mobile wallets is heartening, are the women who access these resources also making the decisions regarding their use? After all, decisions reflect priorities, and when women are able to prioritise spending based on their needs and wants, we see real change in their overall well-being.

Are women with access to mobile phones and mobile wallets also making the decisions regarding their use?

Unfortunately, in this regard, the evidence is sobering: women rarely control physical or monetary assets that are in their name or that they are the primary contributors to. At best, they will be a part of the decision-making; usually, they are not even consulted. In fact, one of the best ways that women can retain control over an asset or over their income is by hiding it. And this is where the primary danger in the digital domain resides.

Over time, women have developed several strategies to hide their income: saving with an elderly, widowed woman within the community, putting the money towards a ‘committee’, or even deliberately keeping their businesses small and earnings under the radar. However, these methods are yet to be adapted and made available in digital formats. Critically, shared devices and mistrust of privacy controls deployed by women on their phones by kin leaves little room in the digital domain to hide or save in the manner that these women have evolved. Besides, what good is money in digital formats if most transactions are in cash? All of these become real and urgent concerns as the government looks to convert BISP payments into disbursements through digital wallets.

One reason why our social protection disbursement is shifting from biometric-verified cash payments by agents to that via mobile wallets is presumably to reduce the incidence of fraudulent activities at cash point. However, given that BISP recipients exist in an economic system where the majority of transactions occur in cash, they would still need to cash out their BISP award, leaving them open to the same extortion by agents.

So, what is the way forward? When it comes to fintech, we must design for the context. Among low-income segments where few, if any, transactions occur in the digital space, we must crack down on extortion while working towards a broader digital economy. In this, we can learn from the Bangladesh experience that is deploying mandatory interoperable merchant QR codes and streamlining and simplifying digital payments across rural and urban communities.

Moreover, although women’s ownership of mobile phones and registration of financial accounts, digital or otherwise, may have increased, that does not mean that ease of or control over use has risen too. We must be cognisant of the dynamics within households and create designs that acknowledge the reality of shared devices and poor privacy.

Finally, fintech must also look to change the types of products available. While it’s great to be able to pay bills online, and have easy pay, borrow and financing options, it is important to consider the specific ambitions of population segments. And in this, the labels of products matter. Women look to build their daughters’ dowries, replace the roof of their house, lay concrete floors in their homes. Here, they may not necessarily connect borrowing or financing options immediately with such individual needs. As products in the space evolve, they must reflect the lived realities of their users to have truly transformative impacts.

The writer is chair of economics at Lums.

Published in Dawn, August 16th, 2026