In most two founder startups one person sells the story and the other makes it run. At KalPay, the Lahore buy now pay later fintech, Shershah Hassan takes the stage and Waleed Amjad Islam, his cofounder and chief operating officer, keeps the machine turning.
Islam and Hassan were friends at school and at university, Arab News reported in June 2023, and they began working on KalPay together in 2020. Hassan raised the first money and launched the product in June 2021; the company formally launched with Islam on board in October 2021. Islam was 25 when Forbes put both men on its 30 Under 30 Asia list in May 2023, according to Gulf News.
His public record is thinner than his partner's, and it is mostly about partnerships and the unglamorous work of making a lender function. This profile sets out what the record shows, and where it stops.
What the public record does not say
The sources available for this profile are candid about a gap. Neither Forbes coverage nor the interviews with Islam give his degree, his university or his earlier employers. Hassan's background is documented: a LUMS BSc in 2020 and spells at Habib Bank and EY. Islam's is not, beyond the fact that the two were at school and university together. This magazine has not filled the gap with guesses.
What can be said is how he is described. CB Insights lists him as a founder and chief operating officer of KalPay, and every press release in which he appears gives him that title.
Lending to consumers, borrowing from lenders
KalPay's product is simple to describe and hard to run. A customer buys from a partner merchant and pays in three equal monthly instalments by card, e wallet or bank transfer, with no interest or extra charges. Because the company takes no interest, its survival depends on keeping defaults low and the cost of its own capital down.
The Forbes profile of KalPay, citing the World Bank, notes that credit card penetration in Pakistan is under one percent and nearly 90 percent of transactions are cash. In a market like that the usual machinery of consumer lending, such as credit bureaus and card networks, reaches few buyers, and a lender has to build its own.
The scale of that machinery was visible in what Hassan told Arab News in June 2023. KalPay was working with about 500 ecommerce merchants and financing purchases from Rs2,000 to Rs500,000, repayable over three months. Every one of those merchants is a relationship to onboard, integrate and keep, and every purchase is a repayment to collect. That is the territory a chief operating officer covers, whatever the company's website says about titles. Hassan also reported that defaults were in single digits and that the company's volume was growing by double digits month on month, both claims by the company.
The Muawin deal
Islam's public appearances have mostly been about that plumbing. On 28 September 2022 a press release announced, with Islam quoted as cofounder and chief operating officer, a partnership with Muawin, which describes itself as Pakistan's first business to business buy now pay later lender. Muawin says its lending portfolio spans ride hailing, retail, logistics and agriculture, and that it helps small businesses gain control of their finances.
Under the deal KalPay would use Muawin's homegrown technology stack to offer end to end digital financing to its network of online retailers, while Muawin would provide working capital to merchants. The companies said they planned to widen the collaboration into a platform to accelerate buy now pay later.
“Our strategic alliance with Muawin is a leap forward in the digital lending landscape of Pakistan.”
Islam said Muawin's business lending expertise complemented KalPay's consumer offering, and linked the two to a broader credit scoring mechanism. Muawin's cofounder and chief strategy officer, Hashim Ali, called it a testament to a vision of collaboration for financial inclusion. The release gave no loan volumes, merchant counts or transaction values.
The partnership mattered because it addressed both sides of the platform. A merchant who is paid up front by a lender and a shopper who pays over three months both depend on someone providing the working capital in between. For a company that charges customers no interest, finding that capital at an affordable price is the central problem.
Teaching a market a new habit
Islam has been frank that the model is unfamiliar to the people it is meant to serve.
“The BNPL concept is still fairly new in Pakistan due to the lack of financial awareness.”
That puts the chief operating officer in an unusual position. Part of the job is the back office of lending: reconciling payments, managing merchant integrations, watching repayments. Part of it is explaining to merchants and customers why a plan with no interest and no hidden charges is real, and why it is structured to follow Shariah principles.
Access as the point
When the Forbes list was announced, Islam framed KalPay's purpose in terms of access rather than growth. The goal, he told The Friday Times, was to give the masses access to credit that enables them to succeed. He said the company was focused on tech based productive assets and educational loans.
By then the company had added two verticals beyond online shopping. KalPay Rasayi offers instalments for productive assets such as smartphones and laptops, and KalPay Taleem covers education and skills fees. In September 2023 KalPay and Taleem Finance Company signed an agreement with LUMS that lets students pay semester fees in interest free monthly instalments, and the University of Central Punjab was also named as a partner. Each vertical is an operational problem of its own, with different partners, different repayment patterns and different risks.
Staying alive while borrowing got dearer
The years since have been about staying alive while borrowing costs in Pakistan stayed high. In May 2024 KalPay announced an early stage round led by Orbit Startups, with Super Capital VC, Bansea and Sabr Capital among the investors, and said it had reached profitability. Profit magazine put the round at more than $1 million, in equity and debt, and reported that a third of it would fund consumer loans through financial institutions. The company also named Foodpanda, Careem and Bank Alfalah among its partners.
In December 2025 Accelerate Prosperity, an Aga Khan Development Network initiative, invested an undisclosed sum, Digital Pakistan reported. Profitability is the company's claim, and the magazine has not seen accounts. It is consistent, though, with a business that has spent its years building partnerships and operating discipline rather than chasing volume.
What the record leaves open
Public statements in that period came from Hassan and chief commercial officer Hasan Mubarak, and KalPay's website names no team, so Islam's current responsibilities are not spelled out in public. Cofounder and chief operating officer is the most recent title on record. It would be wrong to say he has taken on or lost duties, and this profile does not.
What is clear is the shape of the job and its stakes. KalPay's next test is whether it can keep merchants, lenders and customers working together as it extends from online shopping into assets, education and travel, and whether it can do so as a business that charges nothing for the credit it provides. That test falls on the person who runs operations.
