Tania Aidrus vows to bring Paypal, cryptocurrency to Pakistan

KARACHI: The head of Prime Minister’s ‘Digital Pakistan’ initiative, Tania Aidrus, has pledged to bring digital payment provider PayPal and introduce cryptocurrency in the country.

The former Google Executive said that she will play her role in solving the problems of freelancers because of the absence of PayPal in the country. She vowed to take efforts to convince the money transfer firm to come to Pakistan.

“We don’t have any champions of ours in PayPal and it isn’t straightforward to deliver it within the nation. We need to give them an assurance that if they come here, we will understand their issues of compliance. We will start engaging them in a way that will be understandable to them,” she said,

Aidrus was YouTube’s country manager for Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Srilanka, when the video-sharing portal was blocked in Pakistan. Recalling the time, she said that Pakistan wanted to remove controversial content from the site but YouTube wanted a local domain for Pakistan first.

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The issue was not resolved because of the lack of properly authorised infrastructure. She stated: “There’s a regulation referred to as middleman legal responsibility safety which protects platforms or something that has user-generated content material.”

Tania said that the state can’t arrest the staff of YouTube and Google for controversial content, but if they don’t have authorized provision these platforms can stop working there. She  explained that almost three years were wasted in the debate between Pakistan and YouTube over controversial content. The issue was resolved after both sides agree with the demands of each other.

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She also talked about cryptocurrency such as bitcoin which is banned in Pakistan. she mentioned that only 20percent of Pakistanis have bank accounts but in India around 80percent of people have bank accounts.

“We have to deliver long-lasting modifications to Pakistan. We want our expertise to remain in Pakistan. We have to reverse the mind drain. If we maintain shedding our prime expertise, we can’t count on any good.”

She added that With the assistance of college students, girls can begin their startups sitting at home. She vowed to bring change in Pakistan through information and date on the web.