Pakistan’s financial sector by the mid of 2018 will be revolutionized by Fintech. PTA, telecom regulator, speeding up online transactions across all mobile phone networks, in a similar way we make a phone call from one network to another. PTA trying to lift financial inclusions and is planning to award Third Party Service Providers’ licenses by June or July 2018 across Pakistan.
Fintech, digital banking services, is an abbreviation of financial technology. This technology can enable users to make financial transactions from one platform to any other account of a different mobile network, all over Pakistan.
Mobile-based branchless banking services are offered by Jazz’s Mobicash, UBL’s Omni, Telenor’s EasyPaisa. While online transactions from one service to another cannot be made.
PTA has accepted the applications for the Third-Party Service Providers’ licenses to promote Fintech. Third party can be helpful to develop a better system of connection between different service providers.
According to PTA, under the National Financial Inclusion Strategy third party have a critical role to launch Asaan Mobile Account in mid-2018.
The system will make transactions from one wallet to another, or from a wallet to the bank account. This step will drop the threat of cash theft and will also reduce hard cash transactions.
PTA has offered an open license that can be expanded as per market needs. Third-Party Service Provider license fee is Rs. 1 million to Rs. 10 million. For license issuance, the performance bond is also mandatory. The annual license fee is 0.5% of the total revenue of the license.
After the rollout of Third Party Service Providers’s platform, there are grand expectations to see more digital financial services in Pakistani market.