Islamabad: Pakistan is set to invite global online payment giants PayPal and Alibaba to offer their services in the country, the IT ministry has said, after easing its e-commerce rules.
The move follows a decision by the global Financial Action Task Force to remove Pakistan from its list of high-risk and non-cooperative jurisdictions linked to money laundering.
Neither US-based PayPal nor Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba (which operates a service called Alipay) currently work inside Pakistan, which had strict regulation until recently limiting online payments for services.
Local vendors instead offer cash-on-delivery options.
Pakistan’s junior minister for information technology Anusha Rahman said in a Monday statement that following the central bank’s decision to announce new rules for e-commerce, the government would “solicit mechanism to coordinate with international e-commerce players such as PayPal, Alibaba etc encouraging them to establish their set-up to enable e-commerce services in Pakistan”.
Pakistan has a growing IT industry that mainly provides outsourcing services in the form of coding to major Western clients.
IT exports, which account for around 10 per cent of total service exports, are currently worth $2.2 billion annually, with the government aiming to increase the figure to more than $5 billion by 2017.
The country of about 200 million people launched high-speed mobile internet services last year, with the subscriber base now totalling around 18 million. There are also around 21 million broadband internet subscribers, according to official figures.
Alibaba in talks with Hong Kong’s SCMP Group for media assets
Chinese e-commerce titan Alibaba Group Holding Ltd has approached the publisher of Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post newspaper to discuss buying its media assets, a source familiar with the matter said on Thursday.
Earlier, publisher SCMP Group Ltd said it had received a preliminary approach by an unidentified third party interested in its media properties, which include the century-old newspaper.
The South China Morning Post occupies an important position among the English-speaking elite that still dominates the former British colony. Chinese-language dailies may be more influential than the Post, but changes in its editorial direction are seen as a barometer for press freedom under Chinese rule.
On Monday, Bloomberg News reported that Alibaba executive chairman Jack Ma was in advanced talks to take a stake in SCMP.
The source told Reuters the talks involved Alibaba rather than a private investment by Ma. The Hangzhou-based company has been expanding into the media sector with deals in news and advertising.
Some journalists at the South China Morning Post welcomed the news, saying Ma had a reputation for treating staff well.
