SadaPay's Turkish parent Papara is under a state trustee. Who owns the Pakistani wallet now?

In an interview Profit published in July 2023, SadaPay's founder, Brandon Timinsky, said: "I will be very sad if SadaPay gets acquired." Within a year it was. SadaPay is an Islamabad digital wallet and debit card company, regulated by the State Bank of Pakistan as an electronic money institution. Its buyer was Papara, a Turkish fintech that Turkish authorities placed under a state trustee a year later, in a money laundering and illegal betting investigation. The allegations concern Papara's activity in Türkiye, and no report we found alleges wrongdoing by SadaPay itself.

From a 1,000 customer beta to a Turkish buyer

Timinsky is an American who moved to Pakistan in 2018, according to Profit, after launching and exiting GasNinjas, a US fuel delivery service. SadaPay won in principle approval from the State Bank of Pakistan in April 2020, and in March 2021 it raised $7.2 million, which MENAbytes described as the largest seed round a Pakistani startup had closed. New York's Recharge Capital led, with Kingsway Capital and Raptor Group taking part. The private beta was capped at 1,000 customers while a waitlist ran past 200,000.

Growth was quick. Profit counted 2,988,007 app sign ups by 27 June 2023, though the company had over 500,000 customers, and a team of 240, roughly 90 percent of them in Pakistan. Daily Sabah reported that SadaPay had reached 1 million users by the time of the Papara announcement. Profit said total capital raised stood at about $20 million, and in February 2024 reported that sources put the last round's valuation close to $100 million.

The arithmetic of an EMI licence

The business was harder than the sign up curve. An electronic money licence lets a company hold customer balances and run wallets and cards, but Profit reported in February 2024 that EMIs typically earn about 1 percent on ecommerce and point of sale payments, that the State Bank had cut the interchange fee from 0.5 percent to 0.2 percent, that EMIs may invest up to 75 percent of deposits in government securities, and that they can lend to consumers only through partnerships with banks.

Omer Salimullah, SadaPay's chief operating officer, told Profit that an EMI cannot make money from transactions alone in its first five years at least. Timinsky's version was blunter. "The EMI business model is that of a distribution channel," he said, meaning customers first and products later, such as SadaBiz, a service that lets freelancers bring foreign income into Pakistan cheaply. Rivals were leaving, with Careem withdrawing its licence in 2023, Paymax asking to close and TAG having its licence revoked.

Incumbents pushed back as well. Profit reported that HBL had capped transfers from SadaPay accounts at 10,000 rupees a day. Timinsky's counter was that banks "may update their app once every quarter but we do it five times a day".

A $50.5 million sale, then a Turkish trustee

Papara's offer arrived as an all stock deal. Profit reported in February 2024 that Papara would inject $10 million of equity at once and might bring up to $50 million over several years, possibly to help SadaPay win a digital retail bank licence, and that Papara had over 17 million users and planned an IPO in 2025. In June 2024 Profit reported that the deal valued SadaPay at $50.5 million, after an earlier report of $30 million was corrected. That was roughly half the last round's reported valuation.

Timinsky stepped down a little over a week after the acquisition was completed on 30 May 2024. In a message to staff quoted by Profit he wrote that his role "shifted from creating new things to managing more and more responsibility". SadaPay announced Omer Salimullah, a banker with 24 years at institutions including ABN AMRO, Meezan Bank and JS Bank, as acting chief executive. About a month after the deal, local reports said around 30 percent of staff, some 80 people, were let go, which the company attributed to cost cutting.

On 27 May 2025 Turkish police detained 13 people, according to Reuters as relayed by ProPakistani, in a money laundering and illegal betting investigation into Papara, including its founder, Ahmet Faruk Karsli. Turkish authorities alleged that more than 26,000 accounts were used for illegal betting, with about 12.9 billion lira, around $330 million, linked to it, and TechJuice reported that Turkey's Savings Deposit Insurance Fund, known as TMSF, was appointed trustee of Papara and eight other companies. Reuters said Papara did not immediately respond to a request for comment. We found no report of a verdict.

Türkiye Today reported on 1 June 2025 that SadaPay kept operating under its State Bank licence and had issued no statement. It cited a fintech analyst, Muhammad Yasir, via Tribune, who urged the State Bank to review oversight of foreign backed digital payment platforms and said the reputational impact on SadaPay was inevitable, even though the allegations concern activity in Türkiye.

Who stands behind SadaPay now?

The Turkish side has since moved. In January 2026 TMSF put four Papara group companies up for sale at an appraised value of 4.27 billion lira, according to Webrazzi. In April 2026 the Turkish site Memurlar reported that Türkiye Emlak Katılım Bankası had won the tender and taken over Papara Menkul Değerler, one of the four, with the Capital Markets Board approving the change. Neither report mentions SadaPay or any foreign subsidiary.

SadaPay's own account is older. The post announcing the takeover, and the footer of SadaPay's website, describe SadaPay Private Limited as wholly owned by SadaPay Technologies Ltd, a company registered in the Dubai International Financial Centre. The post welcomes SadaPay's acquisition by Papara but does not explain how Papara sits above that structure. Public sources reviewed for this article do not show who ultimately owns SadaPay today, and the company has not addressed the question in the coverage found.

For a business that holds other people's money, that matters. Daily Pakistan noted in March 2026 a leadership change in which SadaPay's chairman stepped down, and that customers were reporting failed transfers, negative balances and frozen accounts. Profit reported SadaPay saying users had seen incorrect deductions and negative balances caused by a fault at an outside technology vendor. "That's on us", the company said, promising to correct balances within two days. A week later the app went dark when cloud infrastructure in Bahrain was disrupted, with cards, ATMs and point of sale payments still working, according to ProPakistani.

The practical question for customers is not whether SadaPay's product works on a good day. It is who stands behind it, and who would answer a regulator, if it did not. SadaPay has been through a sale, a change of chief executive, layoffs and the placing of its parent under a state trustee, and no report we found alleges that SadaPay itself broke any law. The next test is a plain statement of who owns it.

Reported from the company's statements and coverage in Profit, MENAbytes, Daily Sabah, Türkiye Today, TechJuice, ProPakistani, Daily Pakistan, Crowdfund Insider, Webrazzi and Memurlar.