Alibaba’s Alipay, the online and mobile payments platform owned by Ant Financial and Chinese e-commerce giant Aliexpress and Alibaba, is going to start its operations in Pakistan by the end of year 2018. This news was given by Mr Irfan Wahab Khan, Telenor Pakistan’s CEO.
Alibaba’s Ant Financial previously had announced in March this year that it would purchase 45 percent stakes in Pakistan’s Telenor Microfinance Bank.The Alibaba Group uses Alipay as its online payment platform and the worldwide Chinese e-commerce group will commence its digital financial services in Pakistan by the end of this year.At the current moment, ant Financial, the parent company of Alipay is going through the process of seeking approval from State Bank of Pakistan.
The strategic partnership between Telenor Group and Ant Financial combines TMB’s knowledge and local market presence with more than 20 million trusted customers, and Ant’s technology in Alipay, the world’s largest digital payments platform, and other financial services to bring mobile payment and inclusive financial services to individuals as well as small and micro businesses in Pakistan. Alibaba also acquired Pakistan’s largest online shopping platform Daraz.pk from Rocket Internet at start of this year, now this move will help Alibaba expand its footprint in Pakistan.
Alibaba, the Chinese tech giant, also uses Alipay as the preferred method of transactions. A number of Pakistani individuals and businesses use Alibaba to order goods and products from China, and Alipay is also in use in 110 countries across the globe, including the United States, Brazil, Russia, Germany, Turkey, Spain and many more.
As we know Pakistan now embraced with digital technology after the spectrum auction that saw the arrival of 3G/4G services in the country and soon the 5G services will also available, a trusted payments solution was the need of the hour.
In Pakistan mobile phone service has made its way to 72% of the population, according to the latest data shared by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), future economic growth will depend on the online payments services, and Pakistan has 58 million broadband subscribers including 56 million 3G/4G subscribers, while e-commerce market is also keeping up pace estimated to be $1 billion.
Experts believe that with these recent developments in Pakistan, the financial strength and experience will help AliPay adopt a leadership role in the financial payments industry. It will be competing against the likes of Fonepay, PayPak, Avanza Premier Payment Services and others, it’s enough to get anyone’s attention that during the fiscal year of 2017-18, there were 1,094 locally registered e-commerce operators in the country with their merchant accounts in eight local banks by the end of June 2018. Pakistani consumers carried out 3.4 million online transactions worth 18.7 billion Pakistani rupees and 153 million U.S. dollars which is all time high in Pakistan.
