From Access to Income: What Karandaaz Pilots Reveal about Women and Digital Finance in Pakistan

As of 2024, only about one in four working-age women in Pakistan participates in the labour force (approximately 24.3 %), according to World Bank data. Moreover, the Karandaaz Financial Inclusion Survey (K-FIS) 2024 further shows that only 14% of women in Pakistan are financially included compared to 56% of men, highlighting a persistent gender gap in access to and control over financial services. Only 11% of women report having a say in household financial decisions, and women’s digital literacy score (48) remains significantly lower than men’s (65). The findings underline that women’s exclusion is rooted not just in access constraints, but in entrenched in social and cultural norms that limit their autonomy and participation in the financial system.

This persistent gap exists despite enabling policies like the State Bank’s Banking on Equality Policy (2021) and the National Financial Inclusion Strategy (2024), because structural barriers, such as household restrictions, lack of phone ownership, rigid Know-Your-Customer requirements, low confidence, and fear of financial risk, continue to limit women’s adoption and agency.

Karandaaz has focused on developing and testing women-centric Digital Financial Services (DFS) products that better align supply with demand. Through its Financial Inclusion of Women Challenge Fund (FIWC), Karandaaz has piloted diverse solutions to identify models that most effectively address women’s needs and enable meaningful digital financial participation.

The real question, then, is how to create comprehensive impact pathways where digital financial services not only enable women to manage and grow their finances with confidence and autonomy, but also allow them to generate income from within their homes, addressing prevailing social and cultural norms that often limit their mobility and participation.

Insights from the diverse FIWC pilots provide valuable lessons on what it takes for DFS to translate access into economic opportunity.

What Pilots Taught Us About Unlocking Opportunities

Karandaaz’s FIWC tested ten pilots across Pakistan to explore exactly this question: what does it take for women to not just access DFS, but to use it for earning and empowerment? Collectively, these experiments onboarded around 30,000 women. An assessment of the pilots reveals five key drivers of meaningful adoption, and the barriers that hold it back:

1. 1. Income Links Sustain Engagement: Women continued using DFS when it was directly connected to their earning activities. For example, when beauticians, tutors, or social media influencers received their payments digitally, the wallet became central to their income flow, building both confidence and financial autonomy in household decision-making. In contrast, wallets that were only offered as a place to store money or make occasional transfers, without a regular stream of income going in, quickly lost women’s interest. In other words, income was not just a benefit of DFS, it was the engine that kept usage alive.
   2. Trust is the Cornerstone: Trust is the decisive factor shaping women’s adoption of DFS. Women, even when literate and phone-enabled, avoided DFS when they feared fraud or when grievance systems were weak. Conversely, platforms that embedded trust through mechanisms such as peer referrals, women-only networks, or familiar cultural systems like digital Rotating Savings and Credit Associations (ROSCA) saw stronger and more sustained adoption.
   3. Familiarity and Cultural Fit Matter More Than Novelty: Adoption was highest when DFS was layered onto activities women already knew e.g. savings committees, tutoring, beauty services, or micro-influencing. These familiar entry points lowered household resistance and helped women feel ownership. By contrast, models that asked women to leap into unfamiliar, tech-heavy processes, like e-commerce storefronts without adequate local vendor and supply-chain support, faced rapid dropouts.
   4. Handholding Reduces Drop-Offs: Adoption rarely clicked the first time because women often faced fear of making mistakes, low digital confidence, and lack of trusted guidance. Many worried they might lose money through fraud, press the wrong button, or be blamed by family members if something went wrong. Platforms that addressed these fears by offering onboarding in local languages, providing access to women agents, or creating peer support through WhatsApp groups etc., helped women build confidence and stay engaged. Thus, safety and step-by-step guidance were as important as the technology itself.
   5. The Missing Piece Is Progression: Across the board, progression beyond basic usage was limited. Women might save in committees or receive digital payouts, but very few advanced to the full array of financial services i.e. credit, insurance, or investments. Without ladders to deeper financial tools, adoption plateaued. This was not just due to women’s reluctance, but also because most pilots, and the wider ecosystem, lacked the partnerships and policy enablers needed to open the next steps.

Bringing it all together: How to build gender-responsive DFS products

Beyond Access: Building Pathways to Empowerment

Closing Pakistan’s gender gap in financial inclusion will require moving beyond the language of access and toward a practice of empowerment. The Karandaaz pilots show that the sweet spot of impact lies in combining trust, familiarity, income links, safety and handholding, and progression pathways, not as optional enhancements but as the core architecture of digital financial inclusion. This is not about offering women accounts; it is about creating an ecosystem where they can confidently earn, save, and build resilience. Importantly, familiarity should not be equated with confining women to traditionally “feminine” or women-only spaces. Instead, it means rooting DFS in behaviors that women already recognize and control, while layering these with safety, grievance mechanisms, and trusted intermediaries to expand agency. When income is routed through digital channels, when women have trusted entry points, and when pathways to credit, savings, and insurance exist, DFS becomes more than a tool of convenience, it becomes a pathway to autonomy and progression.