Adoctor friend of mine was sitting with her family when the phone rang. The caller’s tone was urgent: he claimed her cousin was being held and demanded money for his release. Without missing a beat, she burst out laughing. “That’s good news”, she replied dryly. “He’s been annoying us for weeks. Keep him as long as you like”.
FINTECH
Adoctor friend of mine was sitting with her family when the phone rang. The caller’s tone was urgent: he claimed her cousin was being held and demanded money for his release. Without missing a beat, she burst out laughing. “That’s good news”, she replied dryly. “He’s been annoying us for weeks. Keep him as long as you like”.
It sounds absurd -- and that’s the point. Pakistanis are now so familiar with scam scripts that some can identify one before it even finishes. From fake WhatsApp accounts to random calls claiming to be from a cousin, a courier or ‘the bank’, impersonation has become an everyday hazard of digital life.
But for Pakistan’s tech founders, especially those building financial apps, that familiarity comes with a different kind of weight. They’re not just trying to make technology work; they’re trying to make people trust again.
The trust deficit: “Every founder in fintech faces the same problem”, says Faraz Bandukda, founder of Hilal Invest, a Shariah-compliant investment marketplace that allows users to invest in Islamic mutual funds across multiple asset managers.
In Pakistan’s digital ecosystem, impersonation scams have blurred the line between caution and paranoia. Fraudsters hack Facebook accounts, clone WhatsApp numbers, or even spoof calls from well-known financial institutions. That constant undercurrent of suspicion forces founders to build not just apps, but environments of digital reassurance.
Building security from the ground up: “When we were preparing to launch the Hilal Invest app, cybersecurity was one of our biggest priorities”, Faraz explains. “All the data we collect is encrypted with a 256-bit hash and secured through end-to-end encryption. We’ve added multiple security layers using AWS and VPN-based connectivity to make data transfers stay protected. User access rights are defined so employees only view what they need to. For us, cybersecurity isn’t an add-on, it’s the product itself”.
It’s a costly commitment for any startup, one that doesn’t always show up in downloads or revenue numbers but for fintech founders, it’s non-negotiable. Without airtight data protection, the first breach can also be the last.
Fighting impersonation from the inside: Even within established financial institutions, impersonation threats loom large.
In Pakistan’s digital ecosystem, impersonation scams have blurred the line between caution and paranoia. Fraudsters hack Facebook accounts, clone WhatsApp numbers or even spoof calls from well-known financial institutions
Asad Mehmood, who works in investment management for a large Shariah-compliant group, explains that vigilance has to start internally. “At our organisation, we use tightly controlled laptops for all company activities. Employees can’t access random websites or plug in personal devices. Even corporate email access on phones goes through FortiToken and similar verification systems”, he says.
He adds that the real battle is behavioural, not just technical: “Most data breaches don’t happen because someone broke into a firewall. They happen because someone believed a phone call. We constantly train employees and clients to verify before trusting”.
This overlap between human behaviour and system design is where tech founders now live. Their apps must be secure enough to resist breaches but also intuitive enough to rebuild the trust that scams have eroded.
The founder’s dilemma: Every digital entrepreneur in Pakistan today is, in some sense, building against fear. Each scam erodes user confidence not only in one platform, but in the entire ecosystem. A phishing call to a bank customer can make someone hesitate before signing up for a legitimate financial app the next day.
“While it’s a big challenge, we were able to build that trust with our customers”, says Faraz. The challenge is cultural as much as technological -- getting people to believe that not every link leads to a scam.
To some, that might sound disheartening. To Pakistan’s growing generation of founders, it’s fuel. They’re designing for scepticism, encrypting every byte of data, layering VPNs and security tokens and running penetration tests long before launch.
Why it matters: Pakistan’s digital economy is on the rise with investment platforms, mobile wallets, and health-tech apps connecting millions. Through initiatives such as Plan9, Regional Plan9 (RP9) and the National Expansion Plan of NICs, the Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB) has built the backbone of Pakistan’s startup pipeline -- graduating more than 1,100 ventures, creating over 24,000 jobs, and generating Rs2.9 billion in revenue by March 2025.
But the same growth has created fertile ground for impersonation scams. Each fraudulent message or call chips away at collective confidence, making it harder for legitimate innovators to gain traction.
Yet that’s precisely where the next evolution lies: in rebuilding digital trust from the inside out.
The writer is a freelance contributor.
