National Institutional Facilitation Technologies (NIFT), a Pakistani payment system operator, and the local arm of US-based financial services provider Citigroup, recently announced a “referral arrangement” under which Citibank Pakistan will refer its clients to NIFT’s infrastructure for processing digital payment services. The deal will allow corporations to use NIFT systems to receive payments via mobile wallets as well as debit and credit cards.
Founded in 1995 by a group of private citizens and six banks, NIFT provides “an electronic platform for clearing, processing, routing and switching of electronic transactions.” The company serves about 14,000 banks and 40 microfinance institutions as of 2022.
Citibank Pakistan is a unit of Citigroup that serves corporations in Pakistan. Citigroup offers consumer and commercial banking, brokerage, asset management, and institutional securities and transactions services. It carries out its philanthropic activities, including a financial inclusion initiative, through the Citi Foundation. Citigroup serves approximately 200 million customers in 160 countries as of 2021. For the quarter ending July 2022, Citigroup reported net income of USD 4.5 billion on revenues of USD 20 billion.
By Ben Greissman, Research Associate
Sources and Additional Resources
Citigroup press release
https://www.citigroup.com/citi/news/2022/220714a.htm
Citibank Pakistan webpage
https://www.citi.com/icg/sa/emea/pakistan/
NIFT homepage
https://www.nift.pk
NIFT financial statements
https://www.nift.pk/CORPORATE/Financials
Citigroup financials
https://www.citigroup.com/citi/investor/data/qer222.pdf
Previous MicroCapital article on Citigroup
https://www.microcapital.org/microcapital-brief-dfc-deploys-280m-via-access-bank-for-sme-financing-in-nigeria/
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