LAHORE: Electronic commerce is trending these days in global trading markets and Pakistani entrepreneurs are also trying gearing-up their expertise in this marketplace.
Unfortunately, as a country, Pakistan is facing many issues in climbing this ladder. Out of many, financial inclusion/ digital payments and trust of global platform in Pakistani online traders are the leading concerns.
Stakeholders said that Pakistan’s e-commerce industry is emerging rapidly and has the potential to strengthen the country’s economy by creating more job opportunities, linking remote areas to mainstream, development of small and medium enterprises to be able to utilize the ability to digitally sell products and services. The need for these platforms and their growth was further observed during the recent COVID-19 lockdown.
Intervention through the Ministry of Commerce and Federal Cabinet, the National E-commerce Council is working on different streams of the National E-commerce Policy (termed as ‘Pillars’), one of which is ‘Financial Inclusion and Digitization through Payment Infrastructure’ for domestic and international e-Commerce trade.
Its office bearers said that after collecting feedback and insights from various private sector stakeholders, it was identified that it is vital to create awareness amongst sellers/merchants of all types regarding the currently available payment methods and to highlight the use-cases they are catering to.
“The current and upcoming service providers in the market are in need of meaningful feedback from the industry and a continuous dialogue is needed to bridge both the demand and supply sides, said Badar Khushnood, head of E-Commerce Committee at P@SHA and founder of Fishry.com.
For this purpose, SBP also continues to play a guiding role by developing supporting rules and regulations for Financial Institutions to develop suitable solutions which promote swift adoption of digital payments in Pakistan, he added.
Currently, almost 90% of payments in Pakistan are through Cash-On-Delivery mode, though there are now some platforms offering digital payments mechanism but banks and other financial institutions needs to upgrade their services to reach One billion dollars’ mark by 2020.
“It is prevalent in Pakistani market to purchase things on COD mode, though via digital payments the process is much easier. One reason is lack of a digital payment mechanism, other is people’s satisfaction, who want to see the delivery first before to pay, since refunds through digital payments takes more time”, Khushnood added.
Fraudulent activities, where traders dispatch fake products to their customers is another issue why country is not progressing in this particular field locally and on global platforms like Amazon, which is not open up for Pakistan due to these reasons.
As per Saqib Azhar, Chief Executive Officer of Enablers, the world still not trust Pakistani digital payment mechanism and its traders. “It is a cyber-crime if you organize any fraudulent activity in Pakistan, there exists laws in the country but the execution process is very slow”, Azhar said.
He further said that there should be a proper check and balance mechanism for this sector and that too on a fast track. “This e-commerce trend is growing in Pakistan but we should think why market is growing in other countries and Pakistan is still in a negative list of platforms like Amazon. There should be some time frame for proceeding against such online fraudulent companies and complaints”, he added.
There are 105 countries available on Amazon platform; Pakistanis are trying to reach this platform via opening up offices in other countries, since Pakistani addresses and credit cards are not accepted by such global e-commerce giants. “Government needs to made formal efforts of getting things straight for this sector as we cannot do much at our own”, Azhar added.
