KARACHI – Digital banking for merchants is taking a new turn in Pakistan with the launch of aikTijarat as BankIslami brings Shariah-compliant merchant services into a simple digital experienc, opening a new chapter for businesses looking for smarter, easier and faith-aligned financial solutions.
The dedicated app segregates merchants and businesses from the consumer ecosystem, giving them a platform built entirely around the way they earn, pay and grow.
With aikTijarat, a shopkeeper, small trader or service provider can open a completelyShariah-compliant business account without visiting a branch. Onboarding is fully digital, powered by CNIC and biometric verification, and existing BankIslami and aik consumer app customers can move across through a shortened journey instead of registering from scratch. Once onboarded, merchants can collect payments instantly through static and dynamic QR over Raast, pay suppliers and utility bills directly from their business balance, and track every transaction with shareable digital receipts — all from their smartphone.
Commenting on the launch, Ashfaque Ahmed, Chief Officer of aik Digital, said: “Pakistan’s merchants are the backbone of our economy, yet they have largely been left out of the digital banking conversation. With aikTijarat, we are giving them a dedicated, Shariah-compliant platform built around their business, not just their transactions.” He added, “This is a direct contribution to the Prime Minister’s vision of a cashless Pakistan and the State Bank’s Go-Cashless agenda. A truly cashless economy can only be built by digitising the merchant counter itself.”
GhuffranAbbasi, Chief Business Officer at aik, said: “We didn’t build aikTijarat to be another payments app we built it to solve the everyday challenges merchants face and become the digital backbone of their businesses.Our success will not be measured by onboarding numbers, but by how many merchants grow because aikTijarat gives them seamless access to payments, suppliers, financing and growth tools all within one Shariah-compliant ecosystem. That is the long-term value we are building.”
The significance of this launch extends well beyond any single merchant. Pakistan’s informal retail economy includes several million shopkeepers, traders and service providers who have largely operated outside formal banking, a segment digital payment providers have long struggled to bring onto documented rails. By offering these merchants a genuinely Shariah-compliant business account, aikTijarat removes the one barrier that has kept many of them out of the formal system altogether. As more merchants move their sales, savings and supplier payments onto a single digital platform, the impact compounds: greater transparency across supply chains, a broader base of businesses eligible for future credit and financial services, and a fuller, more accurate picture of Pakistan’s real economic activity.
Beyond payments, aikTijarat is designed as the starting point of a larger ambition, to build one of Pakistan’s largest and most connected merchant networks. From the neighbourhood shopkeeper to growing retailers and service providers, aik by BankIslami aims to move merchants from simply digitising transactions to being fully digitised businesses, with future phases expected to bring merchant financing and additional business growth solutions onto the platform.
Through this launch, aik by BankIslami reinforces its commitment to financial inclusion and providing Riba-free and shariah-compliant digital financial solutions, advancing BankIslami’s mission of Saving Humanity from Riba through ethical, accessible and technology-driven Shariah-compliant financial solutions.
