Finance Minister Asad Umer recently in a statement said that the Ministry of IT and Telecom has been given a notice of 4 months to bring Paypal to the country. Paypal is an online money transfer system used by consumers, freelancers, and businesses worldwide.
It is to be noted that the previous government also pursued efforts to bring the internal financial service to Pakistan. However, the service remains to be unavailable in Pakistan, an emerging potential market. The Ministry has been asked to form a task force that will convince PayPal to introduce its services in Pakistan.
Asad Umer also indicated that if the engagement is not fruitful, then the Ministry will work on launching a homegrown online payment system and indicated readiness to meet the CEO of PayPal and present Pakistan as a potential market.
Paypal is a much needed service for Pakistan, as the country ranks fourth in the freelancing market earning over and constitutes nine percent of freelancers of the world. In an estimate, Pakistani freelancers earn over $500 million annually. Furthermore, Pakistan has already crossed $1 billion in IT exports and the government is hoping it will grow to over $10 billion by 2025.
Therefore bringing in PayPal will be a relief for the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry of Pakistan and boost the e-commerce companies by enabling customers to move towards a more digitized mode of payment.
