State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has refuted claims that payments to Google are stuck at the central bank.
In a statement, the central bank called such claims “baseless and misleading” and said that it “strongly refutes all such assertions”.
The central bank said that in order to facilitate the domestic entities, SBP specified certain Information Technology (IT) related services, which such entities can acquire from abroad for their own use and make foreign exchange payments there against up to $100,000 per invoice.
The SBP statement said that such services include, satellite transponder, international bandwidth, internet, private line services, software license, maintenance, support, and service to use electronic media and databases.
Entities desirous of utilizing this option designate a bank, which is approved by SBP one time. Subsequently, after designation, such payments can be processed through the designated bank, without any further regulatory approval, the central bank added.
State Bank said that during recent off-site reviews, it was observed that in addition to utilizing the aforesaid mechanism to remit funds for IT related services for their own use, telcos were remitting bulk of the funds for video gaming, entertainment content, etc. purchased by their customers using airtime, under Direct Carrier Billing (DCB).
DCB is, in general, an online mobile payment method, which allows users to make purchases by charging payments to their mobile phone carrier bill.
In view of the violation of foreign exchange regulations, SBP revoked the designation of banks of telcos for such payments.
However, to facilitate their legitimate IT related payments, telcos have been advised through their banks to resubmit their requests.
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