Govt to invite Amazon, eBay, PayPal to start operations in Pakistan

[Edevelop]

Pakistan is going to invite global tech companies including Amazon, eBay and PayPal to start their operations in Pakistan, Minister of IT and Telecommunication Anusha Rehman said at a conference on Tuesday.

The minister said that Pakistan is now listed in anti-money laundering body Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) white-list. This means that Pakistan has agreed to FATF’s anti-money laundering and counter-terror financial standards. Pakistan was previously listed FATF’s grey-list, which discouraged technology companies from coming to Pakistan.

Rehman also informed that State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) was working with partners to open up an e-payment gateway in Pakistan.

“The IT ministry will continue supporting and facilitating e-commerce and e-payment gateway in Pakistan,” Rahman had said on Monday while chairing a meeting of the Inter-Ministerial Committee for establishing the e-payment gateway in Pakistan. “For successful establishment of an e-commerce gateway, a comprehensive e-commerce policy, comprising guidelines, rules and regulations along with dispute resolution and remedial mechanism for consumers, is a must.”

Ministry of Commerce is leading the work on the regulatory framework for the e-commerce industry, while Minister of State for Information Technology and State Bank of Pakistan were assisting in the formulation of protocols, Rehman said, adding that this framework will be formulated over the next few weeks.

Govt to invite Amazon, eBay, PayPal to start operations in Pakistan - The Express Tribune

 

[waleed3601]

This is phenomenal news! Finally Pakistani buyers might have the luxuries of eBay and Amazon available.
But just one thing, to the Minister of IT.........arre bhai pehle YouTube to khol do!

 

[ArsalanKhan21]

Pakistan should also digitize books and distribute iPads to school children. The ink paper books only cause environmental degradation since we do not have that many trees left for paper pulp.

 

[ssethii]

The real question is what was stopping them till now and will this invitation make any difference?

 

[JohnyD]

also invite, flipkart, snapdeal, quikr, magicbricks, billdesk..they all are too good..

 

[Zaneesh852]

Amazon, Ebuy maybe but Paypal, I don't think so given the high financial fraud risk from Pakistani users.

 

[Asian.Century]

this will be great for Pakistanis & these big E-Commerce online shopping giants.

Pakistan to invite PayPal, Ebay Alibaba to start e-commerce services

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan is set to invite global online payment giants PayPal, Ebay 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 per cent of total services exports, are currently worth US$2.2 billion annually, with the government aiming to increase the figure to more than US$5 billion 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/de http://www.channelne...al/2293708.html

 

[Viper0011.]

this will be great for Pakistanis & these big E-Commerce online shopping giants.

Pakistan to invite PayPal, Ebay Alibaba to start e-commerce services

This is JUST the beginning my friend. In Punjab, they've put up IT labs teaching Mobile and E-Commerce application development (which is the future as the desktops, and laptops are starting to go away). Everything will be on Tablets and Phones like IPhone 6. And this is being expanded to Baluchistan too. Sindh already had some good well known IT centers.

The purpose behind setting up these centers was to first setup a labor base KNOWING E-Commerce and Mobile technologies and all.

Step II was to invite these E-Commerce giant companies that can setup distribution centers in Pakistan and really create a global village of products and services (Pakistani products available from Amazon's warehouses in Pakistan to consumers in the US, UK, China and elsewhere).

Step III: would be to negotiate with these companies in terms of starting to keep some IT presence in Pakistan, using that labor base created in Mobile and E-Commerce application development. So expected about $ 30-50 billions worth of investments within the next 5-7 years, plus revenue from selling Pakistani products to the entire globe through online commerce

 

[The Sandman]

wow wow awesome now GOV should focus on auto industry too and invite all the big Giants like VW,ford etc

 

[cloud4000]

You would think Amazon, EBay, and PayPal would have entered the Pakistan market long ago, so why haven't they?

 

[Asian.Century]

This is a big news for Freelancers in Pakistan.

 

[Jazzbot]

Don't get your hopes high. Paypal has planned to come to Pakistan several times before too, and it failed. Sometimes due to unsupported local banking system and last time it was due to State Bank of Pakistan - it wanted a share from paypal on all transactions in Pakistan.

So I'll believe it when I'll see it. Its just an invitation as of yet.

In Punjab, they've put up IT labs teaching Mobile and E-Commerce application development (which is the future as the desktops, and laptops are starting to go away). Everything will be on Tablets and Phones like IPhone 6. And this is being expanded to Baluchistan too. Sindh already had some good well known IT centers.

No mention of KPK?

Karachi is another IT hub of the country, way bigger than Lahore in fact. Also Peshawar also has decent IT base. So quit your biased opinion in favor of Punjab.

Peshawar 2.0 | City of Technology, Design & Art
Home - Digital Youth Summit
Naya KPK: Digital Youth Summit 2014
Techies unite: Digital Youth Summit 2015 draws IT wizards in KPK
Innovating Against Odds: How a Province in Pakistan (KPK) is Transforming Itself

 

[Asian.Century]

Anusha Rehman, Minister of State for IT and Telecom's Promise of Paypal, Amazon & Ebay in Pakistan Still A Distant Dream

At the end of last year, we reported that Pakistan was getting ready to invite tech giants like Amazon, PayPal and Ebay to the country. Anusha Rehman, Minister of State for IT and Telecom had said then that all regulatory arrangements had been made and the companies would be invited to start operations in the country.

7 months on, there’s been zero progress. Pakistan is already in Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) white list, which basically means we have internationally accepted anti-money laundering and counter terrorist financing standards. This was previously one of the major hurdles towards a major company starting operations in Pakistan.

Also read: Govt Soon to Invite PayPal, Amazon and Ebay for Operations in Pakistan: Anusha

That’s not all. Despite a significant freelancing population and increasing internet penetration, there is still no solution for a payment gateway in Pakistan. The State Bank of Pakistan has set a prohibitive Rs. 200 million entry barrier for entrepreneurswilling to build a solution themselves and now, they’re sitting on idle hands.

Ecommerce is exploding in Pakistan. By 2020, it’s expected to be a $1 billion industry. As we’ve said before though, the only way we get there is if the consumers can trust online stores.

Despite horror stories and instances of flagrant violations of consumer rights, there’s no ecommerce framework to address consumers rights, dispute resolutions and all sorts of procedural and mechanical challenges of eommerce industry.

Also Read: Pakistani Ecommerce Industry has One Key Flaw That we Must Fix Right Away!

From the Ministry of Commerce, Ministry of IT and State Bank of Pakistan, we ask: when can we expect an update on anything? The given timeline was for a few weeks and it’s literally been months with zero communication and updates.

To Miss Rehman, we put forth a simple question: what’s taking so long? It seems like our elected representatives have myopia or the attention spans of gold fishes. As soon as there is a political scandal, like Panama Leaks these days, they obsess over it and forget everything else.

Are we going to resign ourselves to the fact that nothing will get done until the flavor of the month political scandal gets resolved? It’s time we got answers to empty promises and announcements that seem like they were only for the press coverage.

more comments:
http://propakistani.pk/2016/05/03/a...mazon-ebay-in-pakistan-still-a-distant-dream/

 

[iPhone]

I'm an avid amazon customer for over 15 years. You can't beat the convenience and prices of online shopping. Hope amazon launches their buisness in Pakistan soon.

 

[Max Pain]

I Guess that news was just too good to be true