How ABHI went from a salary advance app to owning a bank
Founded in Karachi in 2021, ABHI sold early pay as an employee benefit, raised a Series A at a $90 million valuation, issued Pakistan's first fintech sukuk and bought a microfinance bank.
ABHI (Private) Limited was incorporated in Karachi on 20 April 2021, according to its website, by Omair Ansari, a former Morgan Stanley portfolio manager, and Ali Ladhubhai, who had worked at HSBC and Samba Bank and cofounded the comparison site Karlocompare. Its pitch was simple: workers paid monthly run short before month end, so ABHI would let them draw pay they had already earned, for a fee, with the employer settling the balance at payroll.
Selling to the employer, not the worker
The company chose a business to business to consumer model from the start. Employers signed up and offered the service to staff as a benefit, which gave ABHI a repayment source it could trust and a customer base it could reach in bulk. Y Combinator took the company into its summer 2021 batch, and in November 2021 Business Recorder reported a bridge round at a $40 million valuation led by Global Ventures, after a $2 million seed led by Vostok Emerging Finance that June.
Growth was fast. In April 2022 the company announced a $17 million Series A led by Speedinvest, with Global Ventures, VentureSouq, VEF, Sturgeon Capital, Rallycap and FJ Labs, according to a company statement reported by Aaj News. DealStreetAsia put the valuation at $90 million. The company said the value of payments it processed had risen from $2 million in November 2021 to $46 million by February 2022.
Borrowing like a bank before becoming one
Earned wage access is a lending business, and lending needs cheap capital. ABHI's answer in May 2023 was a PKR 2 billion sukuk, about $7.1 million at the time (Forbes later put it at $6.8 million), privately placed with a six month tenor, which trade press described as the first Islamic bond issued by a fintech in the Middle East, North Africa and Pakistan region. PACRA had rated the company AA and A1+ in 2022, a first for a non bank finance company in Pakistan, and its records show the sukuk was issued on 10 May 2023 and repaid in full on 10 November 2023. Crowdfund Insider reported that subscriptions reached twice what the company expected; ABHI then claimed more than 450 client companies and 750,000 employees.
“We are honored to have the support of PACRA and all the investors to launch this first of a kind Sukuk.”
The next step was the Gulf. ABHI opened in the UAE, and in October 2024 Wamda reported a $15 million debt facility co led by Shorooq Partners and Amplify Growth Partnership to fund earned wage access there. By then, the company said, it had advanced about $55 million to UAE workers across roughly 545,000 transactions. It entered Saudi Arabia in 2024 through Alraedah Digital Solutions and later added Oman.
The ledger that became a bank
In Pakistan, the ambition grew to owning a balance sheet. In November 2023 ABHI and TPL Corp said they would explore buying FINCA Microfinance Bank, present in 108 cities. The State Bank of Pakistan approved the purchase of up to 94.8 percent in November 2024, the Competition Commission cleared it on 13 January 2025, and Profit reported that ABHI took 61.61 percent and TPL Corp 33.17 percent. The deal was marked at a ceremony in Karachi on 28 January 2025, Arab News reported, with ABHI promising gold backed loans, salary advances, savings accounts and bill payments. The bank has since been renamed ABHI Microfinance Bank.
A company statement reported by FF News in September 2026 put ABHI's reach at more than one million users and over 7,000 business partners across Pakistan, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Oman. The numbers are the company's own and have moved quickly in press releases, so the magazine treats them as claims. What is not in doubt is the shape of the journey: an app that advanced a few days of wages now sits on top of a licensed bank.
