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About F3
About F3
The Fintech Forward Forum was conceived against this backdrop. Launched in 2023 as a focused roundtable at ITCN Asia in Karachi, it was created to bring policymakers, regulators, financial institutions, technology leaders, and commerce stakeholders into a single conversation around a practical and timely question: where cash meets commerce. As Pakistan’s digital finance landscape matured, that conversation expanded in scope and urgency, reflecting the increasing interdependence between finance, technology, policy, and real-world markets.
By 2025, this momentum culminated in the Fintech Forward Forum taking shape as a full conference, held in Karachi on September 23 during the ITCN Asia edition. Pakistan had made tangible progress across mobile banking, branchless financial services, open APIs, and government-led digital initiatives, while also confronting structural challenges that demanded stronger coordination between regulators, institutions, and market actors. The regulatory environment was becoming more defined, with the establishment of the Pakistan Digital Authority under the Digital Nation Pakistan Act in early 2025, followed by the promulgation of the Virtual Assets Ordinance later that year to create the Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority. The granting of no-objection clearances to global platforms such as Binance and HTX further signalled a shift from informal experimentation toward regulated participation in the digital asset economy.
At the same time, global fintech trends, from embedded finance and artificial intelligence in risk and fraud management to digital identity frameworks and the steady movement toward cash-lite economies, were reshaping how countries like Pakistan positioned themselves within the wider digital economy. The Fintech Forward Forum 2025 was designed to bring these intersecting dynamics into focus. Convened as a halfday forum featuring panels and lightning talks, it brought together senior leaders from the Ministries of Finance and IT, alongside stakeholders such as the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan, the State Bank of Pakistan, fintech and retail associations, PASHA, and private-sector leaders from banking, commerce, logistics, and technology. The emphasis was on execution, alignment, and the real-world implications of financial transformation.
The Fintech Forward Forum is hosted by ITCN Asia and programmed by PakBanker.
F3 2026: Fast Tracking The Future of Finance
The North Edition is taking place on 19 January at the Lahore Expo Centre. It is grounded in the realities of Pakistan’s consumption economy, logistics corridors, and agricultural base. Lahore’s position at the intersection of retail commerce, e-commerce platforms, distribution networks, and agrarian supply chains makes it a natural setting for examining how finance is being embedded directly into trade and production.
As retail and e-commerce scale, financial systems are increasingly tied to the movement of goods, demanding faster settlement, tighter reconciliation, inventory-linked credit, and insurance that moves alongside supply chains. Agriculture remains central to this discussion, with digital finance supporting lending, supply-chain finance, and risk mitigation through data-driven and platform-based models.
Alongside these sectoral dynamics, the North Edition places emphasis on institutional readiness. As banks extend deeper into commerce-led and platform-based finance, the resilience of core systems, cybersecurity posture, and operational risk management become critical. Financial services are no longer insulated from the risks facing digital supply chains; trust and continuity increasingly depend on the security and reliability of interconnected systems.
