Pakistani financial technology company Safepay receives support from Y Combinator, aiming to establish its presence as Pakistan's equivalent of Stripe.

In the bustling city of Karachi, Pakistan, Safepay, a game-changing payment gateway for online businesses, has graduated from Y Combinator's S20 batch. Founded in 2019 by Ziyad Parekh and Raza Naqvi, Safepay has been making waves in the digital payments space, offering easy-to-use, developer-friendly solutions and plugins for platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, Opencart, and WordPress.

The digital payments space in Pakistan is dominated by mobile wallets and banks, but is known to offer a poor experience to both businesses and customers due to various inefficiencies. Safepay is on a mission to fix these issues, positioning itself as the Stripe for Pakistan.

Safepay was presented at YC's demo day on Tuesday and raised the standard $150,000 investment as part of the program. The company has been growing considerably quickly, processing over 5000 transactions in July alone. Notably, Safepay has over 270 merchants using its solutions, including brands like Ego and Kitchen Cuisine.

Co-founder Ziyad Parekh stated that they are focusing on growing the team to reach more merchants and help them receive digital payments. He added that they are charging businesses 3.3 percent and PKR 30 on every transaction they process.

The fellow batch mates provided insights into their own unique businesses, and the connections formed will prove to be invaluable in the future. Interestingly, another Pakistani startup, Byte, was also part of Y Combinator S20, making it the first time two Pakistani startups have been in a YC batch.

Zubair Naeem Paracha, the Founder of our xA tech and startup enthusiast based in Lahore, Pakistan, wrote this article. Zubair can be reached on LinkedIn, Twitter, or at zubair@our website.com.

Meanwhile, Raza, the co-founder of Safepay, was able to progress the business from Karachi while Zubair was in San Francisco handling engineering and YC commitments. Zubair mentioned that working with Y Combinator was fantastic and provided the exact guidance needed to kickstart the business.

Saad Hamid, the founder of Safepay, based in Karachi and the first fintech company from Pakistan to graduate from Y Combinator, is leading the charge. Safepay's growth is a testament to the potential of the Pakistani startup ecosystem and the strides it is making in the digital economy.