Pakistan’s largest digital financial platform is making headlines on two fronts today — a potential billion-dollar ownership change and a widespread service disruption that left millions of users locked out for nearly half a day.
Telenor mulls complete exit from Pakistan
Telenor, the Norwegian telecom giant, is exploring a sale of its controlling stake in Easypaisa Bank, Bloomberg reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. The move would mark Telenor’s complete exit from Pakistan — following its sale of Telenor Pakistan to the PTCL Group last year for Rs108 billion (approximately $385 million), in which Easypaisa was not included.
According to Bloomberg, Telenor is working with Citigroup to offload its 55% stake in the Pakistani digital bank, which could be valued at several hundred million dollars. Chinese tech giant Ant Group Co. holds the remaining shares.
“Telenor plans to invite initial offers from prospective bidders within the next few months.” — Sources cited by Bloomberg
Analysts are viewing the potential sale positively. Christoffer Wang Bjørnsen of DNB Carnegie noted it would be well received by the financial community to see Telenor simplifying its Asian portfolio. No final decisions have been made, however.
Strong financials heading into the sale
Easypaisa enters this process from a position of financial strength. For Q1 2026 (quarter ended March 31), the bank posted impressive results:
| Profit after tax (PAT) | Profit before tax (PBT) | PBT growth YoY | EPS |
| Rs 1.49B | Rs 3.66B | 4.4× | Rs 2.47 |
Meanwhile: millions hit by 10–12 hour service outage
In a separate but equally significant development, Easypaisa officially acknowledged a widespread service disruption on Friday after users across Pakistan reported issues for nearly 10 to 12 hours.
Users reported difficulty logging in, transferring funds, paying utility bills, and accessing other financial services through the Easypaisa app. Many also questioned why it took the company several hours to issue an official statement despite widespread outage reports circulating on social media.
The disruption is significant given Easypaisa’s scale — the platform has over 59 million registered accounts, making any prolonged outage a major concern for daily financial activity across the country.
As of publication, customers were still awaiting updates on the root cause of the outage and a full restoration timeline.
