Uzair Bin Farid

Pakistan must open its doors to the latest Financial Technology, according to Syed Murtaza Abbas who works as a policy analyst and advisor to financial firms.

He was speaking on the second day of the Islamabad Policy Research Institute’s Contemporary Economics Autumn School 2022, here on Wednesday. He gave a lecture titled “FinTech and Crypto Currencies: Opportunities and Challenges.”

He said that Pakistan is one of the fastest countries to adopt financial technologies. Although Pakistan lagged behind its neighbours India and Bangladesh, it still stood at third place in the table that he showed.

“Financial Technologies hold a lot of promise for the future. They have offered solutions which were not possible before. You could not take a loan to buy a shirt essentially. Financial Technology firms have sprung up across the country to offer such services as providing a loan to buy a shirt. This is revolutionary,” he said.

“The good news is that people in Pakistan are adopting these technologies at a fast pace. This has allowed fintech startups to flourish and succeed in their ideas. Otherwise, these ideas would have gone to waste which is not the situation here,” he continued.

“There was a time when a poor person could not go to a big bank and open up a bank account. It was too sophisticated an endeavour for him. Today in Pakistan smart bank accounts have outnumbered traditional bank accounts. A lot of poor people have opened up their mobile accounts. These mobile accounts are easy to manage and offer essentially the same services which are provided by the traditional bank accounts just at a smaller scale,” he said.

“Financial inclusion is continuing apace led by the country’s central bank. This is a good sign but the time for complacency has not arrived yet. The development of cryptocurrencies has made it imperative for the government to institute policies and checks and balances to manage the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Many countries have started to adopt cryptocurrencies in their international trade like Iran. This shows us that cryptocurrencies are here to stay,” he said.

“All we need to do is to have a secure platform for managing these services. Binance is not a very successful platform since its CEO has faced many controversies of fraud. Legal proceedings have also been initiated against him in various countries. Secure platforms the Coinbase wallet are essential to operate in the country if we want to make crypto story a success here,” he said.

“Financial technologies have made it possible to trade in property in as small a scale as square feet. This is highly innovative from firms like Zameen.com and Graana. Pakistan’s fintech ecosystem can be a lot more robust and rewarding if accredited international firms come into the country. Why they do not come is a question to be thought over,” he said.

Credit : Independent News Pakistan-WealthPk