Perplexing Question of the Day about Pakistan

November 9, 2009 / Sara Sullivan / 5 Comments

Why is it, in a country often lauded as being as IT-savvy and advanced as India or the United States, THAT I CAN’T PAY MY BILLS ONLINE IN PAKISTAN?This is a mystery to me. No online bill payment, period. Not your phone bill, not your electric bill, not your rental car, not your gallons of clean water to drink bill, not your super cool Wi-Tribe bill. What is Wi-Tribe, you ask? Just a great little service that lets you connect to the internet anytime, anywhere in Pakistan’s major cities using just a little gadget on your laptop for only about $15 a month. Cool, right? Progressive, cutting-edge, technologically modern and up-to-date? Until you have to march down to the store to wait in line for 40 minutes to pay your bill, in person, in cash every month. What?

Does anyone have any answers to this one?

5 Comments

Dino Charalambides November 10, 2009 at 5:50 am Reply

Sarah,

If you were a company, would you trust that anything from a second or third world country as a payment was legit?

That’s why….
scs November 10, 2009 at 6:37 am Reply

Sure, why not? Have to start somewhere. And the market potential is enormous–170 million people live here! I’m telling you that e-commerce in general is the great undiscovered bonanza of Pakistan. If only I were a little more entrepreneurial…
toddy November 12, 2009 at 3:14 am Reply

I can only imagine it has a lot to do with money transfers in and out of a “hot” country like Pakistan. There are so many strictures regarding moving money in and out of “middle eastern” countries.
Face it, you’re a casualty of the very reason you’re there.
scs November 13, 2009 at 4:22 pm Reply

Interesting point. Even though Pakistan isn’t in the Middle East (thus your “quotes” around that, I imagine).

So, what you’re saying is, I will have achieved professional success here when I can successfully order a shalwar kameez from Karachi and have it shipped to Islamabad. Looking forward to that.
Umayr Sahlan Masud February 24, 2010 at 8:48 am Reply

You can pay your bills online, if you have an MCB online bank account. Most of the telephone /electricity /internet bills can be paid.