Islamabad, 4 April, 2017: JazzCash, Pakistan’s premiere financial services provider and global nonprofit Women’s World Banking today announce a partnership to promote women’s financial inclusion across Pakistan. With funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the partners will work to increase low-income women’s adoption and use of digital financial services, particularly the JazzCash mobile account.

Commenting on this partnership, Aniqa Afzal Sandhu, Chief Digital and Financial Services Officer of Jazz, said, “We are delighted to partner with Women’s World Banking, as they have done pioneering work on empowering women financially in other markets. We look forward to the research findings as they will enable JazzCash to increase financial inclusion of the marginalized and disenfranchised women across Pakistan.”

“We commend JazzCash for seeing women’s longstanding financial exclusion as we always have: an opportunity rather than an obstacle,” said Mary Ellen Iskenderian, President and CEO of Women’s World Banking. “With a mobile savings tool like JazzCash, a woman, who may not have otherwise had access, can open a bank account in her own name without taking time away from her busy day. She can plan for her future, build a safety net for times of crisis, and even grow her business.”

The project will engage nonprofit behavioral design and research firm ideas42 and will leverage global best practices in reaching women with digital financial services, including Women’s World Banking’s projects in Nigeria and other markets. The results will have a global impact as well, not only building understanding of how digital financial services work for low-income women in Pakistan, but also informing similar initiatives to reach unbanked women regionally and globally.

JazzCash, a mobile financial service offering under Jazz’s ecosystem, has over 70,000 retail outlets across Pakistan. JazzCash offers a broad portfolio of branchless banking services for customers including money transfer, bill payments, bank transfers, mobile accounts services, ATM cards, insurance, savings, payment gateway and payments for a variety of services.

Women’s World Banking is the global non-profit devoted to giving more low-income women access to the financial tools and resources essential to their security and prosperity. For more than 35 years Women’s World Banking have worked with financial institutions to show them the benefit of investing in women as clients, and as leaders. Headquartered in New York, Women’s World Banking works with 40 institutions in 29 countries to create access to finance.