Ms. Anusha, Where Are Amazon, Ebay & PayPal That You Promised A Year Ago?

One year has passed since Anusha Rehman, Minister for State for IT and Telecom, stated that Amazon, Ebay and Paypal would soon be available in Pakistan.

After a year, we still don’t see a chance of that happening.

Despite Pakistan’s inclusion in FATF’s white list, which means that internationally accepted anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing standards are in place, there have been no further updates on the matter.

Other things that were promised – and are no where in sight – include a State Bank spearheaded payment gateway and an e-Commerce framework that addresses consumer rights, dispute resolution and other matters pertaining to the industry.

Amazon, Ebay and Paypal in Pakistan

While Amazon and Ebay could raise our e-commerce standards by miles and would be welcome additions, PayPal is what we need the most.

Just in case if you don’t know, Pakistanis are the fifth largest population for freelancing work in the world, and that too without PayPal which the international standard for online payments. So imagine what could we achieve with PayPal.

Apart from freelance work, PayPal could open countless social and economic opportunities for Pakistani businesses; both online and offline.

And above all, it’s almost 2017 and Pakistan is only country in the world where PayPal doesn’t operate.

Payment Gateway

If not PayPal, Ms. Anusha, can you get us a payment gateway at least? You can’t imagine the amount of business Pakistani companies are losing due to unavailability of an easily configurable / viable payment gateway.

Please don’t tell us that there are some hacks available to receive payments online, we now deserve a fully operational payment gateway of International standards, that is configurable in less than 2 minutes.

E-Commerce Framework

We are also waiting for the E-Commerce Framework that you have been working on — along with E-commerce Ministry — for years now.

A lot has been said on why this framework is important but to put it simply, we are going to lose out on several billion dollars if this is not done right.

Just in case you don’t know, Pakistani consumers don’t have a place to file complaints for any grievances against online stores. FIA isn’t an option because it is clueless on how to deal with online stores since there’s no section in the newly passed Cyber Crimes Law to deal with e-commerce related complaints.

We need to fix this quickly before we lose it all.

Tech and telecom reporter for over 15 years


  • Someone asks these bunch of stupids, where are 10 lac jobs which were being created by the auction of 3G and 4G spectrum ?

    nalaiq nallay ki auladein !

    • Anusha ney apney shohar se kiye huwey waaday pooray nahi kiye tou awam se kiya pooray karay gi. Aik saal pehle bhi yehi kaha tha aur yeh baat sach sabit hoi.

  • Would have been great If you had asked the same question to all those sites claiming to offer up to 80% discounts in the name of Black Friday Sale..

    May be it’s just the government that doesn’t pay you for posting “press releases” while websites like fraud dot pk and farudshopping does.

    ProPK ko bhi h–a–r-aa–m ki lat lag gai hai.

    • I appreciate you asking us questions. We still believe in transparency. And for your info, Talal is already preparing a piece on it. Will be up in an hour or so.

      BTW, asking us of high standards, can you at least come up with your own name?

      • Its doesn’t matter what name he is using, but he is saying the truth.
        Whole month you guyz was posting for 25 BlackFriday, and suddenly everything crashed, every news/advertisement was backing the fraudsters, every one was waiting for good deals but under the heavy advertisements they sold fake and useless products or increasing the product charges 100% and then dropped 50% to trick peoples, and I was very unhappy that ProPK was also taking there side.

      • Nope, I will post with this nick to spread negativity about Daraz. At the end, it’s what I say that matters and not the name itself. Name sai post kar bhi doon tuo kon kia ukhar lai ga.

        Just like, I pointed out on your other article on Mobilink’s repayment of borrowed loan in the form of TFC’s redemption, which your staff thought was some profit earned by Mobilink. (without disclosing my name there as well)

    • Pro pakistanio is a web news portal like many others
      yes they will publish sponsored material to run the site and pay writers
      all we can ask from them is transparency between what is their opinion and what is sponsored
      and if you cant figure out the difference between 80% discount and *upto* 80 % discount,, Thats your problem..

      • LAWL :D :D :D Do you really think that I don’t know difference between that? It was for reference purpose… Go on and read the comment section of all the posts on Black Friday Sale to just get an idea on how they fooled general public.

        And as for publishing sponsored articles.. Why don’t then they start publishing for drug dealers? human traffickers? At the end it would the same thing… Post for people who are doing illegal stuff, ProPk shouldn’t be questioned over it..

        • +1 man

          So much unnecessary hype was created about Black Friday in Pakistan this year, did you all forget about what happened last year? Same crap posts by ProPK about some huge discounts, in the end we get nothing. Discounts on useless or outdated items, and no discounts at all on stuff that is actually on sale abroad.
          HomeShopping’s ‘White friday’ made me laugh the most, they put Note 5 on sale for 58k, however the price on their website was already 58k a few weeks before the deals, they add 69k as the original price and put a cross over it, as if they are offering 11k discount, whereas actually they aren’t offering any discount at all.

          Absolute fraudsters, all these online shopping websites.

    • well noir z14 was as low as 18900 so i think there was a decent discount,, on daraz..!

      again i am not pro daraz or backing it up but atleast there was discount
      ab ap 80% ko ley k beth jao to phir ye aik alag masla hey

      whole point is; something is better than nothing

      • Bro Mobile ki prices almost sb follow karty hain aur ussi py Daraz ny kuch discount bhe de diya. Other then that baqi chezon py Price increase kar k phr discount ka Tag laga diya gya. Har online store aisa kar rha hai. Even AliExpress bhe.

        • All normal stores will do like this on aliexpress but officials one’s will not because brands keep there images well. I’m buying from ali express for about 2 years from now. and buy alot of of things on 11.11. Don’t have experience of daraz though.

      • Pakistan main discount naam ki koi chez nahi hoti. Na Online na he kisi Store py.
        Gul Ahmed k store py jo T-Shirt normal days main 2000 ki thi woh Rs 3900 k Price Tag py Cross laga k Rs 3200 main de rhy thy 25th Nov ko aur awam tooti parr rhi thi.
        Black Friday aur Thanks Giving k discount aap ko western countries main mil skty hain bas.

        • Jis qoum ko Ramzan aur Eidoun pe discount na milta ho woh dosroun k tehwaar pe discount chah rhi hai.

    • Sir thora sabar aur kar lain bas kuch dair main ProPakistani ki aik aur Sponsored post aaney wali hai jis main sari Statistics hon gi, Infograph ho ga k daraz py kitni sale hui blah blah.. :)

  • I am waiting for that day when all this tree comes to Pakistan amazon eBay and PayPal so we can get any products from all around the world without begging anyone or any problems so we can grow like other countries come on yaar its 2017 know log kaha se kaha pohance gayi or hum ab b paypal ke pechayi hai

  • buying on Amazon will be good.. but i wouldnt get my hopes up
    as far as i think there will be a punishing amount of import duties and taxes on everything..
    could you plz elaborate on this plz Aamir Bhai..
    how much import and custom duties shall we expect

  • Amir bhai its good k ap info share karty hain but ap say 1 request hai k just dosry end say input lay k na puhncha diya kren bal k is end pr jo pocha jata hy jo concerns share kiye jaty hain jo issues highlight kiye jaty hain unko bhi dosray end pr phunchaya kren ta k FRAUDS na hon aur Awam ka point of view bhi kisi k kaan tak jay aur koi faida ho..Agr koi INCENTIVE he necessary hy ap k blog k lye CORRECT baat ko btany k lye tu bta dein hum CHANDAH ikatha kr liya kren gay PROPAKISTANI k naam say. Shukriya

    • Dear I’m asking abt those frauds/issues which we hv faced due to propakistani like BlackFriday wali loot maar…

  • lot of jobs apps just consider uber , carrem and A taxi its because of that ecosystem now ecommerce is coming

  • comeon man tum log ebay,amazon or paypal ki kya bat karty ho? tum logo ki aliexpress ki shipping gum ho jati hain to ebay or amazon kya karo gey? hamara mulk unfortunately choron ka mulk ban chuka ha

  • Then what about PayPak by 1Link? Is it a local payment system (like VISA and MasterCard) or is it a payment gateway?

  • Mr Writer,

    You need to correct your facts in above article. Pakistan is not alone where PayPal is unavailable. There are many more countries. See below:

    Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Cote
    D’Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North
    Korea), Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Ghana, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon,
    Liberia, Libya, Monaco, Moldova, Montenegro, Myanmar, Pakistan,
    Paraguay, Saint Lucia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Timor-Leste,

    Also you should educate yourself before building fake hope in minds of your readers. Just analyze the countries where Amazon operates currently. All of these countries have ‘manufacturing base” and that’s the core reason why these Amazon.com/co.uk/.de/.in/.cn don’t export (hardly 2-3% are exported) out of their respective geographies.

    After the “manufacturing base” rule the second rule that Amazon follows is the “buying power” of customers. How many Pakistanis can afford a cup of Cappuccino (a reason why Starbucks is not here)?

    Let’s suppose if we have the purchasing power and Amazon decides to enter Pakistan. What will they list on Amazon.pk that is being manufacture in Pakistan? Chinot’s furniture, shoes and few shalwaz Kameez stuff? Rest of the stuff you see on abc.pk and xyz.pk is imported stuff so Amazon won’t operate in an “importing country ever.

    There are many countries that fall in priority to Pakistan if Amazon plan to expand e.g. Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Israel & Turkey etc. All these countries have huge manufacturing base and general public at large has purchasing power.

    So instead of creating false hope, please educate yourself and your readers!!

    • There are two things, PayPal is in some 200 global markets. Remaining are on bottom most line, and Minister IT would definitely not want Pakistan to be in list of countries among Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Ghana, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Liberia, Libya, Monaco, Moldova, Montenegro etc.

      About Amazon, we were just reminding Honorable Minister about her promise. Nothing more, nothing less.

    • In case you have missed it, Amazon is in talks to buy Souq, which is middle east’s no.1 online store and sell almost imported goods.

        • Yes, but still many of the sites were offering huge huge discounts. like bestbuy deal was,

          LED Smart TV 2160p UHD Toshiba 48.9in was somewhere around $200-250

          these are called as deals ….. not stupid ecostar, orient, apex, changhong ruba and tcl ……

          zabardasti ke brands hein yeh, jab kuch nahi milega to awam yahi le gi ……..

          in sab ki **** pe laat maar ke panama bhej do …… kanjaron ka tola. Isn’t she the one who once said 10lac jobs will be created after 3G/4G ?

  • Due to not availability of top e-comrece vender, the peopls of pak will facing of some monoply in ecomrece.

  • I want paypal at all cost.Honourable Ms Anusha Rehman kindly fulfil the promise you made to bring paypal to Pakistan all 180 million pakistani people eyes are on you to make Paypal in Pakistan a reality.

  • One year ago when this article was posted, I know whats gonna happen in reality. These politicians whether its Ms Anusha or any Khappay, Sharif kinda cutting edge political technologists always try to get hold of something which relates finance and finally when they see no feasible outcome.. they ruin it like it is right now.. thats my point of view and others may disagree…!

  • With due respects and with regard to the header, Admin, you don’t promise things “‘an’ year ago,” you promise them “‘a’ year ago.”

  • To the Govt of Pakistan,

    Please do something if you can.

    For the last 10 years, we are facing a lot of troubles in running our online business due to the unavailability of PayPal in Pakistan.

    There are 1000s of other cases that are badly affected due to the absence of PayPal in Pakistan.

    It has been a serious issue for a lot of people in Pakistan.

    So, please help 1000s of people by inviting PayPal in Pakistan.

  • پوچھنا ہے تو راحیل شریف سے پوچھو
    تمہیں کیا لگتا ہے پاکستان کے امن و امن کے حالات دیکھ کر کوئی کمپنی یہاں آے گی
    حال ہی میں دو دھماکوں میں درجنوں وکیل اور پولیس والے مارے گئے

    ارے یہاں تو کوئی ملک اپنے گیارہ کھلاڑیوں کو نہیں بھیجنے پر تیار
    پوچھنا ہے تو راحیل شریف سے پوچھو

  • As I read some comments of friends above who are disheartened over online shopping. The trend shows the discounts which are given in Pakistan, the majority people are not satisfied.
    Aamir Atta has timely reminded to the honorable Minister. No doubt our minister has been performing a great job in Information Technology and if she takes some effort to bring eBay and Amazon in country that would be useful for people. Even these two companies are working for long time in India and insignificant country like Vietnam. So she should take some serious steps to bring to these companies in the country. PayPal is also functioning in India and Pakistan is the largest software producer in the world but having no PayPal facility in the country need to be seriously concerned.

  • I am loosing almost $ 100 ( PKR 10,700 ) just due to unavailability of Paypal.
    Also it takes 5 additional days to get paid from other methods. :/


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