After a two months’ controversial period about the truthfulness of Alibaba’s talks with Telenor, finally, we have confirmed that the news about the deal was true and now in final stages.
The good news for Pakistan is that Pakistanis are finally going to hit e-gateway for online global payments. Absolutely the dream Finance Minister Ishaq Dar made us see back in May while presenting the budget for 2017-2018 in the National Assembly.
And China, Pakistan’s sincere friend favours Pakistan in this regard. As Alipay from Alibaba group is dealing Pakistan to enable consumers to pay online anywhere in the world and the Chinese third-party mobile and online payment platform are about to finalise the talks.
Alibaba is dealing with Telenor Bank to finalise share purchase.
Alipay is talking to get a acquire a prominent stake in the company.We got the confirmation of the talks from industry officials of the Telenor Microfinance Bank Limited.
A statement from State Bank of Pakistan acknowledging the news of receiving due diligence request from Telenor Microfinance Bank also confirms the deal news.
But the deal regarding sale and purchase needs an approval from the central bank and other regulators even after the agreement between both the parties.
Alibaba Group is set to acquire 49% stake in the thus business deal if the deal is locked.
Telenor Group intends to keep the majority of shares and holds 100% stake in the fintech.
Alipay is likely to acquire a 40 % stake in Telenor Bank  $100 million. Ex-PM Nawaz Sharif had a meeting with Alibaba Group founding chairman Jack Ma in Davos earlier the current year and Jack Ma expressed interest in e-commerce sector of Pakistan.
In April this year, Sharif met Michael Evans the president of Alibaba and discussed opportunities for introducing the Global e-commerce giant in Pakistan.
In May the ex-premier also visited the Alibaba headquarters in China and signed a MoU.
A state-of-the-art e-gateway at the SBP had also been predicted by Finance Minister Ishaq Dar. The cost for this project was said to be Rs 200 million.
According to the Economic Survey of 2016-17 Pakistan’s ranking on the Financial Action Task Force list has upgraded from Grey to White to enable entry of credible international players like PayPal.
Irfan Wahab Chief Executive Officer of Telenor Pakistan said the other day people had made local transactions worth Rs600 billion through their mobile payment platform, easypaisa, the previous year.
They targeted the increment of the transactions to Rs700 billion this year which is hoped to be equivalent to 3% of the gross domestic product of the country.
He said that Pakistan’s e-commerce was growing at a rapid pace and It’s worth $150 million (Rs15.75 billion) now and expected to increase to $1 billion by 2020. In Pakistan, Daraz.com made sales close to $1 billion on Black Friday.
In March 2016 the Telenor Group announced the increment of its shareholding in Telenor Microfinance Bank Limited to 100 per cent.
