Pakistan’s fintech group ABHI is preparing to list its microfinance bank on the Pakistan Stock Exchange this month, becoming one of the most significant tech-led IPOs in the country’s history. The announcement, first reported by Bloomberg on July 30, 2026, marks a remarkable milestone for a company that started as a salary advance app just five years ago and has since transformed into a full-stack financial institution with ambitions that extend well beyond Pakistan. ABHI Microfinance Bank plans to offer approximately 14% in new shares to raise between Rs. 2 billion and Rs. 3 billion ($7 million to <head>1 million). Arif Habib Limited, Topline Securities, and Growth Securities have been appointed as financial advisers. The bank held a roadshow in London and is targeting investors from Pakistan alongside frontier and emerging market funds. From Earned Wages to a Bank: How ABHI Got Here To understand the IPO, you need to trace the arc of how ABHI was built. Omair Ansari and Ali Ladhubhai founded ABHI in 2021. Ansari came from Morgan Stanley, where he ran two emerging markets funds focused on consumer and fintech. Ladhubhai had a background in retail banking at HSBC and Samba Bank. Together, they identified a problem that anyone who has lived paycheck to paycheck understands immediately: your salary is accrued every day, but you can only access it once a month. In between, financial stress builds and expensive debt traps emerge. ABHI’s answer was earned wage access (EWA): a platform that lets salaried employees draw down a portion of their accrued salary before payday, interest-free and Shariah compliant, with repayment automatically deducted at the next payroll cycle. The employer pays nothing. The employee avoids loan sharks, expensive credit cards, and the indignity of asking for salary advances through slow, bureaucratic HR processes. The model found product-market fit quickly. ABHI went through Y Combinator’s Summer 2021 batch, one of the first Pakistani startups to do so, and raised a $2 million seed round led by Vostok Emerging Finance in June 2021. By April 2022, it had closed a <head>7 million Series A led by Speedinvest, with participation from Global Ventures, VentureSouq, Sturgeon Capital, FJ Labs, and RallyCap. Existing investors Sarmayacar, Fatima Gobi, and i2i Ventures also joined. From there, ABHI moved fast. In 2023 it issued a $7.1 million Sukuk, becoming the first company in the MENAP region to issue Islamic bonds via this structure. It expanded into the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, and Oman. It grew its corporate client base to over 400 companies and its active employee user base to approximately 800,000, with customers including Unilever, Bank Alfalah, and Artistic Milliners. By 2022 it had reached a $90 million valuation. Total funding across all rounds has reached $58 million. In October 2024, ABHI raised a further <head>5 million debt round led by Shorooq Partners, the Abu Dhabi-based multi-strategy firm, with Amplify Growth participating. That capital helped fund what came next: the acquisition of a bank. The FINCA Acquisition: From App to Institution In early 2024, ABHI and TPL Corp jointly announced a bid to acquire FINCA Microfinance Bank, one of Pakistan’s established microlenders. The acquisition completed in January 2025, with ABHI Pvt. taking approximately 75% ownership and TPL Corp holding the remaining stake. The launch event in Karachi brought together international investors, industry leaders, and the State Bank of Pakistan Governor Jameel Ahmed, who called the partnership “a significant step toward strengthening Pakistan’s financial ecosystem and expanding access to credit for unserved and underserved communities.” What happened next is the part that makes the IPO story compelling. ABHI Microfinance Bank closed 2025 with a profit after tax of Rs. 1.019 billion, the highest in the bank’s history and a complete reversal from a loss after tax of Rs. 1.754 billion in 2024. According to Ansari, the bank had been losing up to $5 million annually before the acquisition. In its first full year under new ownership, it generated more than $3.5 million in profit. It is now on track to earn around <head>0 million this year. That turnaround, from $5 million annual loss to <head>0 million projected profit in roughly 18 months, is what gives the IPO its credibility. The operational changes that drove it were deliberate. ABHI digitized the bank’s operations, closed loss-making branches, integrated its earned wage access technology into the bank’s product suite through AbhiSalary, and applied an AI-powered credit scoring system that improved lending decisions. The result was a leaner, faster, more profitable institution with a tech-native approach to customer acquisition and credit risk. What the IPO Will Fund The proceeds from the listing will primarily strengthen the bank’s capital base, with its capital buffer expected to
