The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has recommended that matching the global norms, bulk payments including Government to Person (G2P) and Business to Person (B2P) should be done through mobile wallet accounts/digital accounts.
PTA recommended that payments through such accounts must be acceptable and as convenient as cash transactions at the merchants’ outlets.
The authority has stated that the Digital Financial System (DFS) and e-commerce ecosystem need to evolve to a state where consumers and businesses feel comfortable to leave their funds in digital form rather than cash, and prefer to make transaction payments through electronic means rather than cash or cash on delivery (COD) to reap the optimum benefit.
Payments across different channels should be ubiquitous and interoperable for consumers so that anyone is able to transfer funds/payments to any intended recipient through any legal channel.
Delivery of additional services such as savings, insurance, investment, and loaning should be available through digital wallets. The road to success lies in the development of consumers’ trust in digital technologies through the provision of essential incentives and enabling platforms, the PTA added.
With 188 million biometrically-verified SIMs and 107 million mobile broadband subscribers, the telecom infrastructure provides an authenticated base for digital/ remote onboarding and provision of digital services.
The e-commerce market in Pakistan has shown impressive growth over the past few years due to increased digitization in nearly every public and private sector of the country. According to the SBP, the e-commerce market in 2020 is estimated to have expanded to Rs. 235 billion, up by 55.5 percent from the previous year. The number of e-commerce merchants registered with banks also increased by 45.76 percent in 2020.
According to the Ministry of Commerce, Pakistan’s e-commerce market size posted a growth of over 35 percent in the first quarter of the fiscal year 2021, it added.
The mostly become my phone to prove to pta
My phone to prove pta
The idea is not bad but it is not PTA that should be making such recommendations. PTA usually tries to cross its limits and imposes itself where it should not. Its authoritarian tone at times in certain matters is certainly undesirable. I can quote examples.