It has been a decorated few days for one of Pakistan’s largest microfinance banks. The latest Mobilink Bank awards haul includes Best Digital Banking Services of the Year 2025 in the Telcos category at CFA Society Pakistan’s 23rd Annual Excellence Awards, the Gender Diversity Award for financial year 2026, and a Community Engagement and Partnerships Award at the UN Women 2026 Asia-Pacific WEPs Awards.
The digital banking title is the bank’s fourth in a row from CFA Society Pakistan, whose annual excellence awards are among the most closely watched in the country’s financial sector. The Gender Diversity Award came in the Non-Banking Financial Institutions category at the same ceremony, which made it a double win on the night for the bank, part of the VEON group alongside Jazz and JazzCash.
What the Three Mobilink Bank Awards Recognise
The third honour came from further afield. At the UN Women 2026 Asia-Pacific WEPs Awards, the regional edition of the Women’s Empowerment Principles awards, Mobilink Bank was recognised in the Community Engagement and Partnerships category for “Banking on Her”, its partnership initiative for women’s economic empowerment. To avoid confusion between two similar sounding ceremonies: that regional event is separate from Pakistan’s own national WEPs Awards, which we reported earlier this month, although both celebrate the same Women’s Empowerment Principles.
Mobilink Bank grew out of the microfinance movement, lending small amounts to people the traditional banking system did not reach, and it now works at digital scale. It has been part of the VEON group’s Pakistan family for years, working alongside Jazz, the country’s largest mobile network, and JazzCash, its mobile money service. Together with JazzCash, it reports a registered base of more than 67 million users and some 2.3 million merchants and agents, it has launched digital Islamic banking operations in the past year, and its Dost app handles digital onboarding for customers who may never visit a branch.
Mobilink Bank’s mobile and digital banking services sit at the centre of its award-winning year (illustration)
Photo: AI-generated image, used for illustration
R E A D M O R E
State Bank Opens Mojaloop Training for Pakistani Payment Developers
The Numbers Behind the Diversity Honours
The bank points to representation as well as reach. Women hold 44 percent of its senior leadership roles, an unusually high share for the financial sector. Across its work with JazzCash, the group counts more than 23 million women users and more than 5 million women borrowers, lending to women has passed PKR 163 billion, some 31,000 women have been trained in financial literacy, and its WIN Incubator has graduated 28 women led startups. Those are the bank’s own reported figures, and they are the substance behind the “Banking on Her” citation.
Aamir Ibrahim, the bank’s chairman and the chief executive of JazzWorld, said the recognition reflects a belief that inclusion and growth go together at the group. Haaris M. Chaudhary, the bank’s president and chief executive, credited its teams and partners for building banking that reaches people the traditional system left out, from first time account holders to women running small businesses from home.
These Mobilink Bank awards add to a strong year for Pakistan’s financial inclusion story, in which financial inclusion reached 71 percent of adults and the gender gap in account ownership narrowed. For a microfinance bank, the next test is the same as it is for the sector: turning award citations into accounts, loans and savings that stay active. More banking and business stories are collected on our Pakistani Startups and Business Success page.
Sources
- TechJuice
- ProPakistani
- The Nation
- Featured image: A woman using a smartphone, as mobile banking reaches more women across Pakistan (file photo) (rawpixel.com, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons)
- In-body image: AI-generated image, used for illustration
Umar Farooq is the founder and editor of Good News Pakistan. An engineer by profession and a writer by passion, he started the site in December 2022 to share good news from Pakistan, and has since written and edited more than 200 articles about its people, sports, science, business and world records. He believes the story of Pakistan is bigger than its headlines, and that good news, told honestly, is worth telling every day.