International Digital Payment platforms can now enter Pakistani market as per the SBP regulation framework draft to facilitate national and international players working on digital payments instruments to acquire a license and start commercially operating in Pakistan.
The revolution of digitalization in Pakistan has been at an all time high. With various changes in most sectors of the country, it has only been added by the State Bank of Pakistan’s regulation framework draft to facilitate national and international players working on digital payments instruments to acquire a license and start commercially operating in Pakistan.
The draft is called the ‘Regulations for Electronic Money Institutions (EMI)’. This refers to non-banking institutions who are licensed to provide digital payments services to customers. To make the market open to investors, Asad Umar highlighted the interest of a national payment gateway by tweeting, “I’m ready to catch a flight and go and meet @PayPal CEO and reps anywhere in the world to highlight potential of Pakistani market”.@Asad_Umarstates in his live session: “We have given ourselves a 4 month or so deadline to bring a universal gateway to Pakistan” #AsadUmarLive
This implies that that the requirement of being associated with a bank will be removed and allowing people to get Payment Service Provider/Payment System Operator licenses. Thus, fundamentally, allowing software houses to make their own wallets. This serves as a breath of fresh air as banks and financials institutions can integrate with each other to ensure popular ventures such as Paypal and Amazon to enter the country. For example, ifPaypal enters the market, all existing banks and branchless banking players will have to work with Paypal to facilitate its users to pull funds from their bank account into Paypal account and vice versa.
Moreover, this showcases an exiting time for the future of digital payment platforms such as EasyPaisa and JazzCash as they will now face competition from faster and more popular players in this category who have gained notoriety worldwide. It has been reported that Careem is planning to be the first one to enter the market with its own wallet to compete with Mobile Account apps.
