PayPal in Pakistan is one of the major needs of the hour specially for freelancers and small businesses.
On a regular basis we Pakistanis run trend tagging Paypal in our tweets to get their attention to the emerging billion dollar IT export economy of Pakistan.
Every government comes in and we hear news that government is taking step to talk to PayPal but unfortunately we remain at the same place.
Before we talk about reasons why Paypal in Pakistan is not coming here are some facts, did you know;
- Only 21.3% of Pakistani population has access to banking services.
- Out of 21.3%, only 14.3% make online payments.
- PayPal is the largest payment gateway solution globally.
- Pay Pal is available in 200 countries
- It has 277 million registered users
- Users are allowed to send receive and hold funds in 25 currencies including major and minor currencies.
- Pakistan has around 200000+ freelancers who provide digital services and more than 7000 small and medium enterprises, they are all in need for PayPal to make transactions with international clients.
- We are 4th ranked in freelancing with maximum freelance market share of 47%
Now keep all facts in mind, we have major questions;
- Being number 4 in freelance market why we lack to do smooth business?
- Paypal operates in underdeveloped economies like nigeria, somalia etc but now Pakistan?
- Why PayPal is not coming to Pakistan?
Why PayPal is not coming to Pakistan?
So now let’s discuss the major reasons why we are unfortunate;
Money Laundering:
All these international payment gateways like Paypal, Stripe or GooglePay have strict policy over money laundering, zero tolerance.
But Pakistani economy has loopholes and we already facing loads of political issues due to money laundering. We stand in gray list of FATF.
Less use of credit cards;
Pakistanis do not use loads of credit cards, for Paypal its the driving force of digital payment system.
License fee;
Interestingly any international organization who is willing to come to Pakistan has to pay license fee of 2 million dollars, which is huge for any company. Now Pay pal charges 2-3% charges and they say that they cannot afford such amount.
Fund Holdings;
Obviously every country gets benefit once the money is in the local banks that how it strengthen the currency. Similarly when Pay Pal entered other Asian countries like India and Bangladesh, they faced this issue from state banks. So this is also a major reason they try not to come to Pakistan.
Political Instability;
In the history of Pakistan there is no single Prime Minister who completed his term. Every now and then we have political issues and people come on roads and break things, that is the major reason for most of international companies do not come to Pakistan.
I will write details on what our freelance community needs the most and they can double the IT exports once they are given all those required solutions.
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