After completing her undergraduate and master's education in Australia, Fatima joined her family business - where she helped turn Red Lea Chickens into the third Largest Poultry Producer in New South Whales. After moving back to Pakistan, Fatima realized the gap between emerging markets and developing economies like Australia. “I wanted to bridge this gap and build a financial wellness platform for employees, especially the women in Pakistan, that would lead to them becoming financially independent”. 

 

Fatima started her company EZ Wage in 2021 as she wanted to digitize payments in such a way that they lend financial independence to the earning employee base. She challenged the idea of a scheduled payday and created an employee-friendly notion that allows people to access their accrued salaries before their scheduled payday. She is revolutionizing the developing countries market as “seeing the disparity that most blue-collar workers face in case of unexpected emergencies makes me wish that our formal credit channels were mature like developed markets.”

 

As a women entrepreneur, she believes times are changing, and the team that she has built operates without any biases. She hopes for more female-led startups to join the entrepreneurial landscape in the near future. Even so, as a woman, discrimination occurred from time to time, and through those times, her father has been her biggest source of support. He guided her and inspired her to do good in the world. Even though sexism is predominant in our society, Fatima has always been headstrong and stood up for herself. To try and encourage more businesses to employ women, EZ Wage has separate flat transaction fees for businesses employing mostly women. She believes that “we have to lead by example to ensure that female authority in positions of power is not undermined and is taken seriously”.