JazzCash is adding artificial intelligence and behavioral research to the core of its product-development process as Pakistan’s digital payments market moves toward more sophisticated financial services. The VEON-backed fintech has opened an AI Foundry and usability testing lab at its Islamabad headquarters, combining AI, rapid prototyping and eye-tracking technology to identify customer friction before new features reach its growing user base.

For digital financial services companies, the next challenge is no longer simply getting customers onto a mobile wallet. As wallets expand into payments, lending, savings, insurance and merchant services, the complexity of the user experience becomes a competitive issue.

JazzCash is responding by bringing product research and artificial intelligence closer to the development process.

The Pakistan-based fintech has opened an AI Foundry and a dedicated usability testing laboratory at its Islamabad headquarters, creating a permanent capability for testing financial products with customers before they are rolled out more broadly.

The facility was launched alongside the 10th anniversary of the JazzCash consumer app. The company says the Foundry will become part of how it develops products during its second decade, rather than operating as a one-off innovation project.

One of its most notable features is an eye-tracking system designed to record where users look, what attracts their attention and where they hesitate while navigating a digital product.

That creates a different type of customer insight from conventional surveys or interviews.

A user may be able to report that an application is confusing, for example, without being able to explain precisely which screen element caused the problem. Eye-tracking data can give product teams a more granular view of where attention is concentrated or where users encounter friction.

JazzCash says the lab provides frame-by-frame behavioral data that product managers can use to test customer journeys, identify usability problems and validate changes before deployment.

From Mobile Wallet to Financial Platform

The investment comes as JazzCash has expanded well beyond its original money-transfer and bill-payment proposition.

The company says its platform now serves 62 million customers, supports 1.7 million Raast-enabled QR merchants, operates digital lending that issues more than 224,000 loans per day, and includes insurance and online payment capabilities.

Some of those figures are company-reported and should be viewed in that context. JazzCash’s own website currently describes more than 60 million people as having used the platform and more than 1.5 million registered merchants.

The scale of the merchant network also matters because Pakistan’s digital-payment infrastructure is becoming increasingly interoperable.

Raast, Pakistan’s national instant-payment system, allows payments to move between participating banks and wallets. JazzCash says its Raast QR service enables merchants to receive instant payments from customers using participating banking apps and wallets.

That means the user experience around a payment is no longer isolated from the wider financial ecosystem. A customer may use a wallet to pay a merchant, borrow money, save, purchase insurance or interact with government-supported disbursement programs.

As the number of use cases grows, seemingly small interface problems can affect much more than convenience.

Why Eye Tracking Matters for Fintech

Traditional usability testing typically relies on interviews, surveys, task completion rates and observed behavior.

Eye tracking adds another layer by measuring visual attention.

For financial applications, this can be particularly useful because interfaces often contain multiple pieces of information at once: balances, transaction histories, payment options, security prompts, fees, loan terms and calls to action.

A user who misses a disclosure or misunderstands a payment step may create a support issue or abandon a transaction. Identifying that behavior during product testing gives teams an opportunity to redesign the experience before millions of customers encounter it.

JazzCash describes the new laboratory as a way to combine customer research with rapid prototyping and AI. The objective is therefore not simply to collect more data, but to shorten the distance between observing a problem and testing a potential solution.

That reflects a broader change in fintech product development.

AI Moves From Feature to Development Infrastructure

AI is increasingly being incorporated into financial products, but its role inside fintech companies is also expanding.

Rather than limiting AI to customer-facing chatbots, fraud detection or personalization, companies are beginning to use AI as part of the product-development and research cycle.

An AI Foundry can potentially support faster prototyping, analysis of customer feedback and experimentation with new digital experiences. When paired with direct usability testing, that creates a feedback loop in which product teams can move from hypothesis to prototype to observed customer behavior more quickly.

JazzCash has not disclosed detailed technical specifications for its AI Foundry or quantified productivity gains from the facility. The significance of the launch is therefore less about a specific AI model and more about how the company intends to institutionalize experimentation.

Pakistan’s Digital Payments Market Is Scaling

JazzCash’s move comes against the backdrop of rapid expansion in Pakistan’s digital-payment infrastructure.

In March, JazzCash and parent company VEON announced that the platform had onboarded its one millionth Raast QR-enabled merchant. At that point, the company reported 58 million registered customers and more than PKR 15 trillion in transaction value during 2025.

The company’s current merchant figures have since moved higher, illustrating how quickly the network is expanding.

JazzCash’s business platform now spans QR and Raast payments, payment gateways, tap-to-phone acceptance, supplier payments, salary disbursements, merchant lending and other business services.

That breadth changes the product challenge.

A wallet serving a narrow set of transactions can optimize for a relatively small number of customer journeys. A broader financial platform must accommodate very different users, from consumers making everyday payments to merchants collecting revenue and customers accessing credit or savings products.

The AI Foundry and usability lab are positioned to address that complexity through more direct observation of how people actually interact with those services.

Designing for the Next 10 Years

JazzCash’s leadership has framed the facility as part of the company’s transition into its second decade.

VEON Group CEO Kaan Terzioglu described the Foundry as a way to keep the platform close to changing customer needs, while JazzCash CEO Murtaza Ali positioned the facility around building products that address needs across underserved segments.

That focus is significant for financial inclusion.

Digital financial services can expand access, but access alone does not guarantee adoption. Products also need to be understandable, usable and appropriate for customers with different levels of financial and digital literacy.

The combination of AI, rapid prototyping and behavioral research gives JazzCash another mechanism for addressing that problem.

The bigger question will be whether the new capability translates into measurable improvements in adoption, transaction completion, customer satisfaction and financial-product usage.

For now, the launch signals a shift in how one of Pakistan’s largest fintech platforms is approaching its next phase: not simply adding more financial services, but building a more data-driven process for determining how those services should work.

Market Landscape

Pakistan’s fintech market is moving from basic wallet adoption toward a broader digital financial ecosystem. Three developments are particularly important:

• Instant payments: Raast is making interoperable digital payments a larger part of everyday commerce.
• Embedded financial services: Digital wallets increasingly combine payments with lending, insurance, savings and merchant tools.
• Experience-driven fintech: As financial products become more complex, usability and customer research are becoming strategic capabilities rather than purely design functions.

JazzCash’s own expansion illustrates that transition, with its platform now covering payments, merchant acceptance, lending, insurance and other financial services.

Top Insights

• JazzCash has opened an AI Foundry and eye-tracking laboratory to integrate customer behavior research directly into financial-product development.
• Eye tracking gives product teams a new view of digital friction, capturing visual attention and hesitation that conventional interviews may not reveal.
• The platform has expanded beyond payments, with lending, insurance, merchant services and online payment infrastructure adding complexity to customer journeys.
• Pakistan’s Raast infrastructure is accelerating interoperable payments, increasing the importance of simple, intuitive digital experiences.
• The Foundry is intended as a permanent capability, signaling that AI-assisted product experimentation will form part of JazzCash’s strategy for its next decade.

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