Asad Umar Gives IT Minister Four Months To Bring PayPal To Pakistan
After a successful Social Media campaign by freelancers primarily, finance minister Asad Umar has finally given four months to IT ministry to convince PayPal to come to Pakistan.
PayPal is a US-based financial service company that facilitates online money transfer by businesses and individuals, simplifying the process of payments. For instance, a customer can directly purchase something off of Amazon if he has a PayPal account.
Previously, these services weren’t available in Pakistan but now Asad Umar has even suggested names for the task force and directed IT minister to convince PayPal to come to Pakistan or work on launching a homegrown online payment system. Asad also previously said he wonders why PayPal is ignoring such a big potential market.
The minister showed willingness in meeting the PayPal CEO and convince him. If he remains successful in negotiations and PayPal comes to Pakistan, this will facilitate about 200,000 freelancers that can potentially earn more than 500 million dollars. These freelancers are currently using informal, non-banking channels to receive payments.
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As the government has set the goal of targeting $10 billion in IT exports by 2025, PayPal will remove one of the hurdles facing BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) industry. Likewise, the e-commerce industry will also profit because of consumers and traders. The company currently operates in 190 markets across the world.
However, this may not be as easy as it seems previous government also expressed intention to invite PayPal as Pakistan was removed from the FATF’s grey list and was placed on whitelist. However, as Pakistan has again been placed on the grey list, it will first have to work to get its name off, provide supporting infrastructure and regulatory framework to welcome a company as established as PayPal.
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