Mobile payments have launched in Pakistan, but I rarely see merchants using them—how do these systems work and who is accepting them?
Payments
Asked by Question Bot08/Jul/20151 answer
1 Answer
F
Faisal Khan
Answered 08/Jul/2015
There are three types of mobile payments in Pakistan:
Payments made using Mobile Phones
This is already in play, with the likes of almost every telco operated branchless (or microfinance) banking operation. Think UBL Omni, think Waseela, think EasyPaisa, et. al.
So this payment option is already in play within Pakistan.
Mobile POS
Square Clones: Currently no Square clone type system is operating in Pakistan. None. Though many have tried, it is all in experimental stage.
Portable Magstripe POS: This is already in the market. Call up McDonalds delivery and they bring this machine out to you. Quite a few merchants have these machines.
Mobile Apps that are ready for Payments
This is a mixed one. If you consider e-banking apps that can be used for IBFT (Inter-Bank Funds Transfers) - then quite a few banks offer it - the most notable being SCB Breeze, Mobit (by Faysal Bank), MCB Lite, HBL, Etc.
On a true application level, no one offers an agnostic layered app for payments that represents a bank agnostic or a carrier agnostic e-wallet (perhaps in some ways MCB Lite could be considered this).
The above is the gist of it all. However, there are providers who are testing their own bank/carrier agnostic payment apps, there are famous messaging apps that are looking at Pakistan for the incorporation of their payment apps, but nothing concrete.
There are plenty of square clone reader based apps, but they have been plagued with regulatory and/or compliance issues.
The issue of launching a truly mobile app lies in addressing the following elements (in no particular order):
The above factors would be the essential factors towards a wider adoption.
- Payments made using the mobile phone
- Mobile Point of Sale Systems (this further has two categories: Phone POS aka Square Clone and Magstripe portable POS)
- Mobile Apps that are ready for payments.
Payments made using Mobile Phones
This is already in play, with the likes of almost every telco operated branchless (or microfinance) banking operation. Think UBL Omni, think Waseela, think EasyPaisa, et. al.
So this payment option is already in play within Pakistan.
Mobile POS
Square Clones: Currently no Square clone type system is operating in Pakistan. None. Though many have tried, it is all in experimental stage.
Portable Magstripe POS: This is already in the market. Call up McDonalds delivery and they bring this machine out to you. Quite a few merchants have these machines.
Mobile Apps that are ready for Payments
This is a mixed one. If you consider e-banking apps that can be used for IBFT (Inter-Bank Funds Transfers) - then quite a few banks offer it - the most notable being SCB Breeze, Mobit (by Faysal Bank), MCB Lite, HBL, Etc.
On a true application level, no one offers an agnostic layered app for payments that represents a bank agnostic or a carrier agnostic e-wallet (perhaps in some ways MCB Lite could be considered this).
The above is the gist of it all. However, there are providers who are testing their own bank/carrier agnostic payment apps, there are famous messaging apps that are looking at Pakistan for the incorporation of their payment apps, but nothing concrete.
There are plenty of square clone reader based apps, but they have been plagued with regulatory and/or compliance issues.
The issue of launching a truly mobile app lies in addressing the following elements (in no particular order):
- Bank agnostic
- Carrier agnostic
- Associated card scheme
- Localized payment rails to accept the transaction and to be able to treat (read: mimic) it as an IBFT transaction rather than a card scheme transaction
- Direct one-hop interoperability with various branchless banking networks (i.e. direct settlement)
- Addressing the MDR issue
- Addressing loss of revenue for issuing banks on non-card scheme based transactions, and
- Acceptability, i.e. distribution.
The above factors would be the essential factors towards a wider adoption.