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, indiatimes.com reports. Neither PayPal nor Alibaba (which operates a service called Alipay) currently work inside Pakistan, which had strict regulation until recently limiting online payments for services. However, local vendors offer cash-on-delivery options.
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% of total services experts, are currently worth USD 2.2 billion annually, with the government aiming to increase the figure to more than USD 5 billion by 2017.
The country of about 200 million people launched high-speed mobile internet services in 2014, with the subscriber base now totalling around 18 million. There are also around 21 million broadband Internet subscribers, according to official figures, the source cites.
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