Pakistan will have a payment gateway to incorporate PayPal, Google Pay, and Apple Pay by June 2021, said National Institutional Facilitation Technologies (NIFT).
“People residing outside Pakistan will be able to pay via Paypal, Google Pay, and Apple Pay while payments within/from Pakistan will be processed by integration with any international payment provider,” NIFT said in the fourth meeting of the National e-Commerce Council (NeCC), chaired by Commerce Adviser Razak Dawood. The payment system will be established with the support of a third party.
The ministry of commerce said the e-commerce market size in Pakistan expanded by 35 percent to Rs96 billion during the first quarter of the fiscal year 2021. The market size was Rs 71 billion during the first quarter of the previous fiscal year. In the fourth meeting of the NECC, the ministry of commerce informed that e-Commerce merchants with prepayment have been almost doubled in the last 12 months to 2,164.
The NeCC discussed operationalisation of cross-border e-commerce procedure, incentives for promoting e-commerce, discussion on international payment services, Mercantile Stock Exchange, digital on-boarding services, reports of Consultative Committee of Women Economic Empowerment (WEE), e-commerce business facilitation portal, consumer protection councils, availability of broadband to remote areas, Trade Development Authority of Pakistan (TDAP) digital transformation process and collaboration with Small and Medium Enterprises Development Authority (Smeda) on e-commerce related matters.
The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) briefed the forum about the legal framework for e-commerce regarding the mechanism of imports goods clearance, the return of goods policy, and the WeBOC e-commerce module.
The Sub-committee on Financial Inclusion & Digitisation and the Trade Development Authority of Pakistan shared their progress with the forum.
