The khata app that became a lender

Pakistan's retail trade runs on credit, and for most of the country's millions of small shops the record of who owes what is a handwritten khata. CreditBook's bet, when it launched in Karachi in June 2020, was that a free app could replace the book. The founders, Hasib Malik, Iman Jamall and Hisham Adamjee, had watched Khatabook and OkCredit do the same in India and BukuWarung in Indonesia, and they paid for the first version themselves.

Finding the customers

The app logged sales on credit, kept a transaction history and worked in six local languages. Its hook was the reminder. CreditBook sent free SMS and WhatsApp messages to customers who owed money, and the company told Dawn in May 2021 that this made collection up to three times faster.

Growth was fast and entirely free. Forbes recorded more than 250,000 registered users within six months of launch, when it put Jamall and Malik on its 30 Under 30 Asia list in April 2021. A month later the company said it had passed 500,000 users. By December 2021 it said the app was in use in more than 400 towns and cities, though it declined to tell TechCrunch how many merchants it had.

Finding the money

The first outside money was $175,000 of pre seed funding from individuals in Pakistan's retail and financial sectors, according to Forbes. In May 2021 CreditBook raised a $1.5 million seed round co led by Pakistan's BitRate VC and Dubai's VentureSouq, with Better Tomorrow Ventures, Ratio Ventures and i2i Ventures among those taking part. The app still made no money.

Seven months later came the round that made the company's name. On 17 December 2021 CreditBook announced an $11 million pre Series A led by Tiger Global and Firstminute Capital, the first Pakistani investment for either fund. Profit reported that an internal company document confirmed the figure and that the round was oversubscribed. The company said the money would go on the team, on cash flow features and on becoming a financial services provider for small businesses.

“We are excited to partner with CreditBook and make Tiger Global's first investment into Pakistan.”

Finding its footing

CreditBook has not announced another venture round since. Instead it has used the ledger data to underwrite loans. The company set up CreditBook Financial Services, a non bank finance company that it says holds an investment finance services licence from the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan, with its Tijara lending module inside the khata app whitelisted for digital lending. The SECP's approved list of lending apps dated July 2026 lists CreditBook Tijara under business to business financing.

The public product has changed to match. CreditBook's website now leads with FinanceNow, a portal offering invoice, purchase order, revenue based and working capital financing with funds promised within 48 hours of verification, and an embedded financing offer for other platforms. The home page claims more than 500,000 businesses impacted and over 6 billion rupees disbursed, while the about page says over one million small businesses. Both are company figures and they do not agree.

Recent activity has come through partnerships rather than funding. In posts on its LinkedIn page CreditBook announced a tie up with the Bank of Punjab to offer digital lending to merchants, an instalment plan with Elixs Bikes for electric motorcycles in Punjab, and, most recently, a deal to put its merchant financing inside the Digitt Plus payments app. LinkedIn shows only relative dates for these posts, which place the Bank of Punjab announcement in late 2025 and the Digitt Plus deal around September 2026.

What the company does not publish is a loan book, a default rate or revenue. Tracxn recorded 27 employees in September 2026. CreditBook is still trading and still licensed, but the story it tells today is of a specialist lender finding its footing, not the mass market consumer app that Tiger Global backed.