Visa and 1Link Partner to Promote Digital Payments in Pakistan

Visa teamed up with 1Link, a payment system operator and payment service provider in Pakistan, to promote digital payments in Pakistan.

The partnership will facilitate the integration of the Visa Alias Directory Service with the 1Link network to simplify incoming remittances and improve the user experience, 1Link said in a Wednesday (Sept. 11) post on LinkedIn.

The collaboration also creates the opportunity for all PayPak cards to be accepted by all Cybersource-enabled acquirers, according to the post. PayPak is Pakistan’s domestic payment scheme, owned and operated by 1Link, according to the company’s website.

The partnership is part of Visa’s efforts to encourage digital transactions in Pakistan by boosting the number of businesses accepting digital payments by 10 times over the next three years, Leila Serhan, general manager for Pakistan, North Africa and Levant at Visa, told Reuters in a report posted Wednesday.

There are 120,541 point-of-sale (POS) machines in Pakistan, according to the report. Visa aims to boost that number by building digital payment infrastructure in the country to make digital payments less costly.

Serhan said of the 1Link partnership, per the report: “We’re really looking forward to finishing this technical integration in the coming months, and I think it’s going to be a game changer for a lot of the consumers in Pakistan.”

In another collaboration, Visa Cross-Border Solutions and LemFi said in March that they expanded their existing partnership globally, enabling LemFi to extend its reach into Pakistan, India, China and other markets around the globe.

Visa Cross-Border Solutions, which is a Visa division specializing in cross-border money movement, became LemFi’s primary partner in facilitating cross-border transactions and continued as the company’s preferred provider of ePayments and foreign exchange services.

In August 2023, NymCard, a Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) firm that serves the Middle East and Pakistan, joined the Visa Ready to Launch (VRTL) program, saying that its platform will scale up the onboarding of the program.

The VRTL program aims to simplify the process of issuing payment products for FinTech and nonbanking organizations, and NymCard’s plug-and-play platform helps FinTech companies in the region transform their payment credential issuance capabilities.