Banking

My aunt has been putting her savings into fixed deposits at her bank for over fifteen years. Every time a term matures, she walks in, renews it, collects her profit slip, and leaves feeling like she has done something sensible and responsible with her money. She has never once compared her profit rate against inflation, … Read more

Sending and receiving money internationally from Pakistan is something millions of people do every single month, whether they are freelancers collecting dollar earnings from overseas clients, families receiving remittances from relatives working abroad, students paying tuition fees to foreign universities, or business owners paying international suppliers. Yet most of them are doing it in a … Read more

A friend of mine got his first credit card in Pakistan three years ago and treated it exactly the way most first-time cardholders do: as an extension of his income rather than a short-term borrowing tool. He spent freely, paid only the minimum due each month because the bank made that option very visible and … Read more

Before learning how to get a personal loan in Pakistan you need to know a few things. Getting a personal loan in Pakistan used to mean a long trip to a bank branch, a stack of documents, a painfully slow process, and more often than not, a rejection letter with minimal explanation. That experience put … Read more

For years, I walked past the gleaming glass facades of Islamic banks with a sense of pride. Like millions of others who wanted to keep their finances aligned with their faith, the shift away from traditional, interest-based banking felt like a massive win. I remember opening my first account, genuinely believing I was stepping into … Read more

A friend of mine spent months dreaming about buying his first car on installments. He had a stable job, a decent salary, and had already picked out the model he wanted. When he finally walked into the bank to apply for a car loan, he was turned down within a few days. The reason the … Read more

A colleague of mine got a call one afternoon from someone claiming to be from his bank’s fraud department. The caller knew his name, his bank’s name, and even the last four digits of his debit card. He sounded professional and urgent. He told my colleague that a suspicious transaction had been flagged on his … Read more

A few years ago, a relative of mine was setting up a new bank account and the officer asked him whether he wanted a conventional or Islamic account. He paused for a few seconds, then said “Islamic” mostly because it felt like the safer answer in front of other people at the branch. He had … Read more

The first time I went to open a bank account on my own, I came back without one. Not because the bank refused me, but because I showed up without the right documents. The officer listed everything I was missing, handed me a requirements slip, and told me to come back. I felt embarrassed walking … Read more

When I was around 18, my father took me to a bank to open my first account. I sat across from the bank officer, nodded at everything he said, signed where he pointed, and walked out with a passbook and absolutely no idea what I had just signed up for. Was it a savings account? … Read more