There have been various posts and long arguments about e-Commerce on TGP recently and the lead discussion has been about Raseen launching their e-Commerce Payment Gateway. Is Pakistan really ready for merchant based e-Commerce has been another technology question asked by a reader from www.askbajwa.com.
At the moment, this whole news about Raseen’s e-Commerce Gateway seems to be more of a hype than looking at an original product ready, launched and in action placed in the market. Initially calling Raseen’s product to be an alternative to PayPal is not a valid argument, especially when Raseen hasn’t announced anything officially nor advertised their product in the news papers across the nation. Yes they have some discussion collateral about their product on their website but that’s about it.
If Raseen intends to launch with Al-Falah, that is the biggest drawback for the individual and cottage industry individual that to operate a bank account with Al-Falah requires a certain amount of balance and if Raseen’s requirement will be to maintain a corporate merchant account with Al-Falah, the bank might charge a larger deposit fee that again does not benefit the individual knowledge worker.
First of all, we have over 2000+ members on the PayPal Authorize Pakistan Now! Campaign, that’s a pretty large figure for people interested in PayPal and as for Raseen, to the prospective user, Raseen doesn’t even exist. We only started hearing about this company a few months ago and that isn’t enough to create the user trust factor that PayPal has developed over so many years and especially when it constitutes a major portion of the Webmaster and online auction system. In order to receive payments from foreign websites and people, PayPal is required because they tend to prefer and authorize payments only through their PayPal accounts and accept the other receiving end to also have a PayPal account.
The issue for PayPal that is still misconceived by many is that most people think we need a new payment gateway. That is both valid and not valid. Say you write articles and charge $5 per article. For that small an amount, neither Raseen nor 2Checkout will be able to help you. If you write 8000 words every day and that is like 20 articles, you can multiply that and get the figure and then the monthly calculation will give you the price that an individual can make through PayPal and if you had a bunch of people doing that same thing, you would actually end up with thousands of knowledge workers contributing that figure.
Pakistan needs PayPal and it needs an individual supporting system. The slogans sung in this message are not worthy of any acclaim as of yet unless Raseen secures a huge amount of e-commerce activity. If it expects that Pakistan will do lots of e-commerce, its day dreaming but if it thinks the individual will be empowered through its solution through a low-cost offering to develop the culture, it would stand a good chance of probably rising a bit above the expectations.
My feeling is that this speculation surrounding Raseen should be stopped and let Raseen do what every good corporate company does, create a strong advertising campaign and launch it on national TV and News Papers and see the response. It is better to pause speculating before the service arrives and proves its mark.