Finance Minister Asad Umar stressed that Pakistan needs a reliable online payment gateway in order to promote the needs of the country’s IT and e-commerce sector. To this end, the Finance Minister signaled his willingness to go meet PayPal’s CEO on the next flight, and convince him to consider the Pakistani market.
Highlighting Pakistan’s IT sector and the market potential, he does not understand why PayPal is not interested in exploring a huge market. Asar Umar also mentioned that even if PayPal does not set up shop here, there must be some other alternative that Pakistanis can use as an internationally accepted payment gateway.
“I have met Prime Minister Imran Khan and IT minister in the past few days just to make sure we are moving in the right direction in this regard,” the minister said.
Asar Umar is hoping to attract either PayPal or other internationally accepted alternative during the next four months, pointing to the fact that many entrepreneurs and startups need it.
During an online interview, he was asked about why Pakistan has closed sales on other spectrum after the 4G auction. He responded that even though spectrum sale has shut down, there are still more opportunities available. He pointed to Myanmar’s example, saying that they have mobile spectrums higher than 400 Mhz whereas Pakistan has shut off sales after auctioning off 124 MHz of it.
“Why are we still holding on to that? This is not a finite resource that could end.”
via The News