Pakistan’s QisstPay Raises Funds Ahead of South Asia Expansion

(Bloomberg) -- Pakistan’s buy-now, pay-later startup QisstPay has raised $15 million in early stage investment, ahead of expanding to Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

MSA Capital led the round with participation including from Global Founders Capital, Fox Ventures and First Check Ventures. The Islamabad-based company wants to enter other South Asian markets within six months.

The company that serves retailers including the local units of Samsung Electronics Co. and Xiaomi Corp. plans to have 1,000 merchants by next month and a million customers by next year using its service.

Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer Jordan Olivas, 32, moved to Pakistan after finding a large population that hadn’t been transformed by technology. Olivas, a U.S. citizen, is a former employee at buy-now, pay-later pioneer Klarna, which raised funds from SoftBank Corp. at a valuation of $45.6 billion in June. He wants to emulate Klarna’s success. 

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“We want to be in all the places where people think it’s a tough place to start a business,” Olivas said in an interview. 

QisstPay’s investors include strategic angel investments from Simone Mancini and Johnny Mitrevski, founders of Scalapay, and Pakistan’s third-largest lender United Bank Ltd. The startup has done two fund-raising rounds, including equity and debt, since starting in April.

“Pakistan is one of the most often overlooked countries when it comes to fintech investments,” said Tim Chen, general partner at MSA Capital. “However, it’s also one of the countries with the most potential.”

The world’s fifth-most populous nation is seeing record money flow into its startups with more than $268 million this year, higher than the past six years combined, according to Crunchbase and Invest2Innovate data.

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