How a developer in Karachi actually gets paid in dollars.
Wajahat Karim is an Android developer in Karachi, a Google Developer Expert of 6 years, and since October 2025 he has been building apps in public and publishing every figure. In his fourth newsletter he wrote down the thing nobody writes down: how the money physically reaches a Pakistani bank account.
This page is that guide, in his own words, with the screenshots. Every quote is from his newsletter, every link goes to the original.
He made the whole thing a video.
Everything below, walked through end to end on his own channel. If you would rather watch than read, start here.
How to Get Paid in Pakistan 2026 | Stripe Alternative for Freelancers SaaS Builders | Complete GuideYouTube · Wajahat Karim
First, the wall: Stripe does not support Pakistan.
If you build a web app, you need Stripe to take subscriptions and one-time payments. Stripe does not operate in Pakistan. In his words:
“if you are building a web app, then you definitely need a stripe account to collect subscriptions and one-time payments. but stripe doesn’t support Pakistan, so there’s another option which I have heard works in Pakistan is called Polar. i haven’t personally tried this yet, so i can only say what i have heard from my friends who have used it.”
Newsletter #4, 13 November 2025. Note his own caveat: he has not personally used Polar.
The workaround everyone repeats is a dead end.
The standard advice is to register a US LLC so you can open Stripe. Stripe Atlas routes that through a US bank account, and that is where it stops for Pakistanis:
“last year in july 2024, Mercury Bank announced that they will not allow bank accounts of few countries which included Pakistan as well. so when you apply with stripe atlas, it will process your whole application and when the time comes for the mercury bank account, it will terminate the process and will refund you the money you paid.”
“believe me i wasted 1 and half month on this.”
Newsletter #4. He also notes the Dubai company route has become hard because of visa restrictions, and warns that connecting a Payoneer virtual account to Stripe is risky because Stripe can freeze funds.
The route that works: mobile, and your own bank account.
Google Play and the App Store need no Stripe and no company abroad. This is the whole mechanism, in his words:
“google play and apple app store don’t need any stripe or LLC etc. google play will ask you for your individual CNIC or passport and will verify your account with the home addresses, bills and so on. once your account is ready and you have published the apps, then you can create your payment profile. this will ask you for a bank account details with IBAN. you will share your local bank account (in my case it’s Standard Chartered PKR current account) and google will verify it by sending test amounts and once verified, you are done.”
When it arrives: the 15th, every month.
“now google play will send you payment every 15th of the month for the previous month, and it hits my account around 4-5 days later.”
Newsletter #4. He adds that Apple’s process is almost the same.
The tax: 1 percent, if you are a filer.
“since this is a remittance and counts in software exports, so you are eligible for the 1% tax payment (if you are a filer). either bank will deduct the 1% a day after the payment or you will have to submit the amount at the time of filing and pay to FBR.”
Read the condition. The 1 percent rate is what he reports for a filer. This page is his experience written down, not tax advice: check your own status with FBR or an accountant before you plan around it.
Who he is, and where he actually is.
Wajahat Karim. Karachi. 12 years an Android developer. Google made him a Developer Expert 6 years ago. Two books with Packt. He started building in public in October 2025.
And he is not doing this from the top:
“the MyDiary AI app is doing okay (i wouldn’t say great yet) and it’s growing slowly. it has crossed 1400+ downloads on Google Play, is making around $70 revenue each month from both lifetime and monthly recurring revenue.”
Newsletter #5, 12 January 2026. That is his own RevenueCat figure for the Oct 2025 to Jan 2026 window, and it is the most recent number he has published.
The two apps, live on Google Play.
Install counts read off the live listings on 10 September 2026. Google Play shows buckets, not exact numbers.
What he builds with.
Asked so often it went in the newsletter. Native Android, Jetpack Compose, simple MVVM:
“i don’t get obsessed with architectures, and all that clean code crap. i prefer shipping rather than beautifying the code and solve the bugs in production.”
Newsletter #2, 29 October 2025. He planned to move to Flutter after the gallery app so he can ship iOS too.
The part worth keeping.
“You learn more in one week with a live product than you do in one year of planning.”
He is a self-described perfectionist who sat on this idea for more than five years before shipping. And when it went badly he wrote that down too:
“i got lazy. i got distracted. i got demotivated. i sort of given up. but here i am in my weekly newsletter #3 proving my accountability and trying to keep on track.”
“your first app will be embarrassing as hell. but ship it anyway. but your second app will also fail with a disaster. your third will not be the so-called charm you expect to. most of your apps will fail. so just build it fast. fail fast. and you might get lucky with one.”
shipkaro is his word for it: ship in English, karo in Urdu. Just ship it.
Read the whole thing, free.
Five issues, October 2025 to January 2026. #4 is the payment one.
What he is aiming at in 2026.
These are goals he set, published on 12 January 2026, not results. Worth watching against what actually happens:
Newsletter #5. He also lists 24 YouTube videos, 10,000 subscribers and 10,000 newsletter readers. As of this page, #5 is his most recent issue.
Update, straight from him.
After this reel went out, Wajahat sent over what has happened since the newsletters. In his words:
Wajahat KarimPK- “Diary app got aquired from a german company :)”
- “I started teaching people how to make apps called as shipkaro weekend (it’s a 3 day program to go from 0 to launch on Google Play). Did the 4 batches so far :)”
- “Working on 3 more apps (one is launched last week)”
So the $70 a month figure in the reel is his last published number, and it is already out of date: the app it came from has been acquired. He has not published the price, so there is no figure here.
shipkaro weekend
His 3 day program: idea to a published Google Play app over a weekend, Friday to Sunday, 8pm to midnight PKT. Four cohorts have run. Cohort 4 had 29 people and sold out. It includes his NowKit starter (Kotlin + Compose, auth, payments and analytics wired), the session recordings, a private cohort group and a closed-testing tester pool for Google Play’s requirement.
His own words for himself on that page: “Pakistan’s First Google Developer Expert in Android”. Pre-registration for cohort 5 is open there.
Focus5, the new one
Launched the week of 8 September 2026. No subscription: a $29 one-time Founder Pack, which his site says goes to $49 later. Site: focus.shipkaro.dev
That is the whole wall, written down.
No Stripe. No US company. Your CNIC, your own bank account, the 15th of the month, 1 percent if you are a filer. If you have an app sitting in a folder because you did not know how the money would reach you, now you do.
Every quote on this page is from Wajahat Karim’s own newsletter and links to the original post. Screenshots captured 10 September 2026, app figures 10 September 2026. His experience, not financial or tax advice.