Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) will be issuing licenses to Third Party Service Providers (TPSP) for an initial fee of Rs 1m, media sources have reported. The TPSP will be playing a bridging role between telecom operators and banks for providing advanced mobile banking services nationwide.
The fee will be payable within 15 days of the intimation letter stating that the license has been issued.
PTA has invited applications from interested parties for a 10-year license.
The Annual License Fee (ALF), equivalent to 0.5% of the Licensee’s annual gross revenue from Licensed Services, will be paid annually by service providers.
The licensee should be able to allow switching and routing of all interbank Wallet to Wallet and Wallet to bank account fund transfers from BB Issuer to BB Acquirer through an Authorized PSO which will be responsible for clearing and providing day-end report(s) for reconciliation.
The settlement, on the other hand, will be undertaken at SBP as per existing mechanism.TPSP will be maintaining logs of routed transactions, security and privacy of information passing through its systems and providing high quality of service, availability of resources, network redundancy, security/secrecy, authenticity and non-repudiations of financial and technical transactions in addition to all such requirements set out in the Regulations for the Implementation of Mobile Banking, 2016 and Regulations for Mobile Banking Interoperability.
The licensee shall also set up unified USSD channel platform to open and access mobile account(s) offered by any of branchless banking provider of his choice, accessible to subscribers of all cellular mobile operators and facilitation for any-to-any model.
The TPSP will also be making use of NADRA’s real-time verification of customer credentials to facilitate account opening.
