For a country full of talented digital workers, a nation that is one of the world’s top homes for freelancers, Pakistan is deliberately disconnected from the global flow of money. The continued absence of major international payment services like PayPal and Stripe is not just an annoyance for our tech community; it is a crippling economic problem. It is a locked door in a world that runs on open business, a barrier we have built ourselves that stops growth, kills new ideas, and makes our dream of a digital economy look like a joke. This isn’t just a missing service; it’s a sign of a deep sickness in our country’s financial system.

Pakistan’s restrictive financial laws deter global payment giants like PayPal and Stripe, crippling the digital economy.

For years, the official story has been a series of rotating excuses. We have been told these companies are simply not interested in coming here. We have heard vague talk about our country’s risk level, often blaming the long shadow of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). While our history with the FATF grey list certainly made things harder, using it as the main excuse today means we are avoiding a more difficult truth. The biggest roadblocks are not from the outside, but from within. They are built into the very design of our financial laws.

Take the State Bank of Pakistan’s rules for new digital payment companies. They are a perfect example of being overly cautious. With demands for large amounts of money upfront and a slow, multi-step approval process, these rules were made for an older time in finance. They are designed to control and manage, not to help and empower. For global companies like PayPal, which handle huge numbers of transactions for small profits, the high cost and hassle of following such strict rules just doesn’t make business sense. They are not asking for a Wild West with no rules; they are looking for a legal system that is modern, quick, and understands the speed of online business. Our system, as it is now, is a bureaucratic fortress when what is needed is a simple, welcoming gate.

This shows a major disconnect in our country’s strategy. Our government institutions are stuck in a mindset of control, obsessed with stopping money from leaving the country and managing risk by locking things down. This is a 20th-century way of thinking that clashes with the 21st-century reality of online trade, where value is created and moved in clicks, not in shipping containers. The goal shouldn’t be to just attract one specific company, but to change the entire official mindset from being a gatekeeper to being a helper. We have failed to build an environment of trust and efficiency that would make coming to Pakistan an easy business decision instead of a risky bet.

Freelancers face costly delays and extra fees due to lack of mainstream payment services, harming professionalism and earnings.

The human cost of this failure is huge, and it is paid every day by our brightest citizens. Imagine a freelance software developer in Multan who gets a project from a client in Canada. The client normally pays with Stripe or PayPal. Right away, the Pakistani developer is at a disadvantage. She has to ask for a bank transfer, which is slower and costs more. Or use another service like Payoneer, which works but adds extra fees and steps. This challenge deprives her of money, time, and most importantly, has a look of unprofessionalism. It brings doubt and is bothersome to the whole process as it continues to remind her that she is outside the rest of the world.

Consider this now, but with hundreds of thousands of freelance developers, online vendors, and small technology companies in the country all telling the same story. The result is a massive waste of our economic potential. Billions of dollars in foreign income are either lost to competitors in other countries or shrunk by expensive workarounds. We are basically forcing our most energetic economic sector to pay a private tax. In our constant search for foreign loans, we ignore the huge, steady river of foreign money that our own people could bring in if we only gave them the basic tools of the modern global economy.

Therefore, the way forward is not to form another government committee that makes hopeful promises that are later forgotten. The solution is a deep and serious reform of our financial laws. The State Bank must be given the power and the order to create a new, fast-track license for globally known payment companies—a license that makes it easy to start up and operate flexibly, while still having strong checks for security and to prevent illegal money flows. This requires us to change our official attitude from one of suspicion to one of support.

State Bank rules are outdated, emphasizing control over enabling modern, fast, and flexible online business operations.

Asking “Why aren’t PayPal and Stripe in Pakistan?” is the wrong question. The correct question is: “Why is it that our government and our rules, make our country unattractive to them?” The point is to tell yourself the truth about this question, to do what it demands, and change hard. It is a challenge to how serious we are as a nation to our financial independence, how much we want to invest in our young generation and how keen we are to fully enter into the 21st century world. Not to do so will mean being willingly left out in the cold, as the world digital march parade goes ahead.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. They do not represent the views, beliefs, or policies of the Stratheia.