Biographies
Iman Urooj is the COO and Ziyad Parekh is the co-founder of Safepay, a startup building an online payment gateway for Pakistan. Safepay was part of Y-Combinator’s S20 batch. It serves over 265 merchants today, and has processed over $70M.
You’re building a Stripe equivalent for Pakistan. Why is Stripe not available in Pakistan?
Stripe doesn’t operate in every country directly, and Pakistan is one of those markets where they’re not present. That said, they’ve invested in us and have been incredibly supportive from day one.
Payments is a highly regulated space, so in many cases, the best solution is one that’s built locally and tailored to that market’s specific regulatory environment.
Why didn’t a Pakistani online payment gateway exist before Safepay?
They did exist but they were run by banks, the only actors in possession of the required licenses for such products. These bank-led products were heavy, clunky, and didn’t fit the needs of most Pakistani businesses, especially SMEs.
Also, Pakistan’s economy has historically been cash-based, which reduced both the need and the pertinence of online payment gateways. The paradigm shifted during the pandemic, when digital payments took off and Pakistani merchants ran into the lack of adequate solutions to process online payments. That’s the wave Safepay rode.
What did your MVP look like?
Ziyad built it, with the onus set on quick and easy onboarding (prior payment gateways’ biggest weakness). Ziyad and his co-founder Raza onboarded more than 50 merchants, mostly SMEs, before getting into YC.
What does Safepay’s product look like today?
We offer a platform helping Pakistani merchants accept payments across multiple rails, including credit/debit cards, mobile wallets, and bank accounts through Raast (Pakistan’s instant payment system).
We've also focused on making it as easy as possible for developers to integrate payments into their apps and websites, by building tools that abstract out different payment methods’ complexity.
What does your client base look like today?
We work with a pretty wide range of businesses, from large e-commerce brands to fast-growing startups — across industries like fashion and apparel, education, healthcare, groceries, and insurance. It’s a diverse merchant base, and our main focus is helping them grow their revenue by giving them a seamless and reliable way to manage payments.
We’re currently building an app geared towards Pakistan freelancers and expat Pakistanis, helping them make and receive payments in stablecoin.
How do you make money?
We take fees on every transaction and we charge service fees for enterprise clients with custom needs.
You ran into a quasi-lethal roadbump early in Safepay’s life. Can you explain?