Pakistan is set to invite global online payment giants PayPal and Alibaba
to offer their services in the country, the IT ministry has said, after
easing its e-commerce rules.
The move follows a decision by the global Financial Action Task Force to
remove Pakistan from its list of high-risk and non-cooperative
jurisdictions linked to money laundering.
Neither US-based PayPal nor Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba (which
operates a service called Alipay) currently work inside Pakistan, which had
strict regulation until recently limiting online payments for services.
Local vendors instead offer cash-on-delivery options. Pakistan’s junior
minister for information technology Anusha Rahman said in a Monday
statement that following the central bank’s decision to announce new rules
for e-commerce, the government would “solicit mechanism to coordinate
with international e-commerce players such as PayPal, AliBaba etc
encouraging
them to establish their setup to enable e-commerce services in Pakistan.”
Pakistan has a growing IT industry that mainly provides outsourcing
services in the form of coding to major Western clients. IT exports, which
account for around 10 percent of total service exports, are currently worth
2.2 billion US dollars annually, with the government aiming to increase the
figure to more than 5 billion US dollars by 2017.
The country of about 200 million people launched high-speed mobile internet
services last year, with the subscriber base now totalling around 18
million. There are also around 21 million broadband Internet subscribers,
according to official figures. (AFP)