GS interviews Payfuture's Zaki Farooq

In today's fast-moving payments landscape, growth often comes from stepping into the unknown. In this Q&A, Zaki Farooq, co-founder and CTO of Payfuture, shares how adopting a Blue Ocean mindset—targeting underserved, high-potential markets—helped his company scale rapidly without following the crowd. He also reflects on lessons learned from leading through uncertainty, building across cultures and redefining what it means to grow globally.

Green Sheet: You've spoken about embracing uncertainty rather than avoiding it. How did that mindset shape the early direction of Payfuture?

Zaki Farooq: In business, we're often told to avoid uncertainty – to mitigate it, minimize it, or design it out altogether. But if there's one thing I've learned building a global payments business in emerging markets, it's this: uncertainty isn't something to avoid. It's something to lead through. And if you do it right, it can become your biggest competitive advantage.


When my co-founder Manpreet Haer and I launched Payfuture, we weren't aiming for the usual suspects. Instead of fighting for market share in oversaturated Western economies, we embraced a Blue Ocean Strategy – intentionally steering toward underserved growth markets in MENA, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa.


In other words, the markets that are often labeled as "too complex," "too fragmented," or simply "too risky." Those labels, I've found, often say more about a company's mindset than about the market itself.


It was that decision to embrace Blue Ocean thinking that changed everything. Manpreet and I launched Payfuture in 2019 and since then, the company has skyrocketed and we have built a global presence with offices in London, Dubai, Malta, and the Philippines. This growth is proof that there's real value – and real opportunity – in choosing the path others often overlook.

GS: What were some of the biggest challenges you faced entering emerging markets, and how did you overcome them?

ZF: Early on, we were told that launching in these regions would be a logistical nightmare. Multiple currencies, regulatory hurdles, limited infrastructure, wildly different consumer behaviors – you name it. And those warnings weren't wrong. It was complex. But what I quickly discovered was that complexity isn't what kills growth – inflexibility does.


Many companies enter emerging markets with rigid systems and rigid thinking. They try to copy and paste the same model that worked in Europe or the US, expecting the local market to bend to them. It rarely does. Real leadership means you're the one who has to adapt.


Our system has been designed to work with many local payment methods (like mobile wallets, local bank transfers, etc), because people in emerging markets don't always use the typical debit/credit cards common in the West. We designed the technology so it could easily connect to different payment systems in each country – prioritizing following local financial rules and regulations, which helped us to earn trust with the likes of governments and business partners.

But the hardest part wasn't building the technology, it was understanding and adapting to the cultural differences in how people and businesses operate in those regions.
We had to learn to listen, not assume. To stay curious, not certain.

GS: How did leading in such unpredictable environments change your approach to leadership?

ZF: I've worked in technology and cybersecurity for over 30 years, but no amount of technical expertise prepares you for the demands of leading a business in uncharted waters. In fact, one of the hardest lessons I had to learn was that expertise can sometimes get in your way.
There's a comfort that comes with "knowing your stuff." It gives you confidence. But in uncertain environments, confidence must come from somewhere else – from your ability to adapt, to observe, to experiment without ego.


When we expanded, we faced a series of delays due to unexpected shifts in local policies. My instinct was to find a workaround – to push harder, faster, to fix the problem. But that approach backfired. What was needed wasn't speed or brute force. It was patience, humility, and partnership. 
 We regrouped, engaged with local stakeholders, and adjusted our rollout strategy. That experience taught me something fundamental: when everything around you is uncertain, the most important thing you can bring as a leader is stability. Not the illusion of control, but the calm confidence that your team can figure it out together – no matter how messy things get.

GS:: You've mentioned the importance of inclusive leadership. How does that play out at Payfuture?

ZF: There's another lesson uncertainty has taught me: if you want to grow in unfamiliar markets, you need a leadership style that's inclusive by design.


We've built a globally distributed team across several time zones and cultures, and I've learned that top-down, hierarchical decision-making simply doesn't work in this environment. You can't be everywhere at once. You have to empower local teams to lead – to make decisions, learn from mistakes, and shape the business on the ground. 
 That requires trust, of course. But more than that, it requires systems that assume difference rather than trying to standardize it out. We don't treat local knowledge as a nice-to-have. We treat it as a strategic asset – one that's central to how we build, design, and scale.


I often say that the best ideas in our company don't come from the top. They come from the edge – from the people closest to the customer, the infrastructure, and the cultural context. My job isn't to control them. It's to support them, challenge them, and make sure they're heard.

GS: Finally, what advice would you give to leaders facing uncertainty in their own industries?

ZF:If there's a common thread to all these lessons, it's this: uncertainty isn't a threat to leadership. It's the test of it. It forces you to become more human. To lead not with certainty, but with clarity. To trade rigid plans for responsive systems. To build not for predictability, but for resilience.


Looking back, I'm grateful we didn't play it safe. Choosing a Blue Ocean path – where few others were looking – forced us to become more creative, more resilient, and more human in how we lead.


Had we focused only on the "easy" markets, we might've built something functional. But we wouldn't have built something transformative.


So, if you're staring down uncertainty in your business or career right now, remember: growth doesn't come from knowing exactly what's ahead. It comes from trusting that you'll figure it out along the way.

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