How AI Financial Inclusion Is Becoming Pakistan’s Biggest Digital Bet

AI financial inclusion just landed on a global stage, and Pakistan grabbed the microphone first. At the United Nations’ Social Business, Youth and Technology Forum on September 22, the country laid out a pitch that mixes artificial intelligence, tokenization, and blockchain into a single argument: developing nations should help write the rules for emerging tech, not just adopt them after everyone else has finished.

The numbers behind the pitch are hard to brush off. Roughly 1.3 billion adults worldwide still have no bank account, yet about 900 million of them already carry a mobile phone. That gap between phone access and formal financial access is exactly where Pakistan argues AI and digital assets can do the heavy lifting.

Who Made the Case, and Why It Matters

Bilal Bin Saqib, chairman of the Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (PVARA), delivered the keynote address. He shared the stage with UN General Assembly President Dr. Khalilur Rahman, Nobel Peace laureates José Ramos-Horta and Muhammad Yunus, Bhutan’s Prime Minister Dasho Tshering Tobgay, and Brazil’s Minister Wellington Dias, according to ARY News. That is not the guest list for a routine policy update.

Saqib’s line summed up the pitch well: “Technology alone includes no one. Regulation alone includes no one. Inclusion happens where the two meet.” Here is the thing: Pakistan is not just talking. It passed the Virtual Assets Act 2026, built a regulatory sandbox, and set licensing rules for virtual asset service providers. That is a sharp reversal from 2018, when digital assets were effectively locked out of the banking system.

PVARA and What the New Framework Actually Does

PVARA is a young regulator, but it has moved fast by government standards. The sandbox lets companies test AI-driven fintech products and virtual asset services under supervision before a full license is required, which matters a lot for startups that cannot afford years of regulatory uncertainty. Licensing rules for virtual asset service providers give banks and investors something they have wanted for years: a legal basis to work with crypto and tokenized asset firms without guessing at compliance.

Bilal Bin Saqib and Ambassador Asim Iftikhar Ahmad, speaking separately at a related UN briefing covered by TechJuice, pushed back on the idea that countries like Pakistan should stay “merely consumers of emerging technologies.” Their argument: emerging economies need an actual seat at the table when global digital finance standards get written, not a finished rulebook handed down after the fact.

40 Million Users and a Very Young Market

Pakistan now counts more than 40 million virtual asset users, one of the largest and youngest such populations anywhere in the world. Saqib pointed to three concrete use cases where AI financial inclusion moves from slogan to product: cheaper remittances for overseas workers sending money home, tokenization as a tool for attracting outside investment, and blockchain’s ability to make financial flows more transparent and easier to trace. Yeh game-changer sabit ho sakta hai, agar implementation sahi tarah se ho.

Remittances alone are worth dwelling on. Pakistan is among the world’s top recipients of worker remittances, and every percentage point shaved off transfer fees translates into real money staying with families instead of intermediaries. AI-driven fraud detection and blockchain settlement rails are exactly the kind of technology that can compress those costs, if the infrastructure and skills exist to run them locally.

The Risk Nobody Is Glossing Over

Saqib did not sugarcoat the downside either. Without real capacity-building, he warned, digital finance could deepen inequality instead of closing it, creating what he called “a new form of financial divide” between countries with strong tech infrastructure and those without. That is a fair worry. AI models and blockchain rails are only as inclusive as the training, connectivity, and regulatory clarity that support them. A framework on paper does not automatically produce skilled engineers or reliable internet in every district.

The briefing pulled in UNDP, UNCTAD, and the UN’s technology envoy office. Pakistan’s offer was straightforward: share its regulatory playbook, and push the UN to build a platform where emerging economies shape digital finance rules together instead of inheriting them from wealthier blocs.

What This Means for Pakistani Tech Businesses

For local software houses, fintechs, and IT exporters, this is more than diplomatic theater. A functioning regulatory sandbox and a licensing framework for virtual asset providers signal that the government wants AI-driven fintech and blockchain products built locally, under clear rules, instead of offshored to friendlier jurisdictions. That is a real opening for firms that can move fast on compliance, security, and integration work. Pakistan’s IT exports have already been climbing past $3 billion annually, and a credible digital-assets framework gives that growth another lane to run in.

Key Takeaways

• 1.3 billion unbanked, 900 million with phones: the addressable gap AI-driven financial tools are aiming at.
• 40 million virtual asset users: Pakistan already has scale, not just ambition, in this space.
• Virtual Assets Act 2026: a real legal framework, not a policy paper, complete with a sandbox and licensing rules.
• Three named use cases: cheaper remittances, tokenization for investment, and blockchain-based transparency.
• The warning worth remembering: without capacity-building, the same technology can widen inequality instead of shrinking it.

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If Pakistan’s fintechs and IT firms are going to build on this new regulatory foundation, who ends up writing the actual software that turns AI financial inclusion from a UN speech into something 40 million users actually rely on?