News Desk |
“The highly anticipated arrival of Paypal, the global online payment system has been under the spotlight of criticism as Paypal has decided not to introduce services in Pakistan as of yet”, IT secretary told a Senate Committee.
The company operates as a payment processor for online vendors, auction sites, and many other commercial users, for which it charges a fee in exchange for benefits such as one-click transactions and password memory.
Ministry of Information Technology Secretary, Maroof Afzal, on Thursday, 16th May, told the Senate Standing Committee on Information Technology that, “PayPal did not decline because it has issues operating in Pakistan. Their internal working is such that they are not ready to introduce services in Pakistan.”
Pakistan has one of the fastest growing IT industries in the world with a large sum of remittances being earned from the outsource market here.
Senator Mian Mohammad Ateeq Shaikh of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement said that ‘PayPal is afraid to come to Pakistan unless there are laws to protect the company’s interests’.
In February, former Finance Minister, Asad Umar, stated that there were discussions to bring the Online TXN giant to Pakistan. He had also set aside reports of the government obstructing the company’s entry into the Pakistani market. In November 2015, the IT Ministry had announced that it was set to invite global online payment giants PayPal and Alibaba to offer their services in Pakistan.
Pakistan has one of the fastest growing IT industries in the world with a large sum of remittances being earned from the outsource market here. In 2018, Pakistan’s information and communication technology (ICT) exports touched $1 billion. However, these are documented numbers; the actual figure stands around $2.5 billion according to the first-quarter State of Pakistan’s Economy report for fiscal year 2018-19 released by the SBP.
Read more: New online payment portals launching in Pakistan
According to the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), Pakistan has failed to document straight money worth $1.5 billion due to unavailability of online payment systems like PayPal in the country, which can support online money transfers and services.