Karachi: Caretaker Minister for IT and Telecom and Science and Technology Dr Umar Saif said enabling PayPal and stripe payment gateways in Pakistan is "High priority" for current setup.

Addressing at ITCN Asia 2023 ceremony here, he admitted that government has treated freelancing community poorly. "Freelancers cannot easily monetise their skills, there is no PayPal in Pakistan and no stripe payment gateway," he said. "It should not be hard to convince PayPal for second-largest online workforce in world to have access to payment instrument. Enabling PayPal payment and stripe payment gateways in Pakistan is very high priority for us," he said.

Minister said he would meet representatives of companies (PayPal and stripe). In February last year, Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication announced that PayPal is not coming to country on account of Financial Action Task Force objection, fearing terror financing.

"Remaining customers in Pakistan are not making business case for PayPal," said senior officials of ministry back then.

Saif said government would come up with mechanism, where they could register online freelancers. "We would extend same tax regime of 0.25 percent to them," he said. Saif said that IT industry can "Fix Pakistan trade imbalance".

He said Pakistan's biggest strength is its large, educated, young and tech-savvy population. He shared country's IT sector has become second largest online worker marketplace in world. "Pakistan has close to 400,000 online freelancers, who make between $ 5-10 every day," he said.

Saif admitted that authorities have made life of IT industry exceptionally difficult. "We keep changing our tax regimes and made it difficult for them to bring funds in Pakistan."

"If authorities facilitate us, I can increase IT industry's size from $ 2.6 billion to $ 3.5 billion in couple of months," he added.

Published in The Daily National Courier, September, 01 2023

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