Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan has suspended the NADRA-MasterCard agreement saying that the deal was made without seeking prior written government permission and consultation with stakeholders.
The agreement was feared to raise national database security issues in the wake of NADRA expanding services into an area that was not a part of its mandate,reported a national daily earlier on Thursday. NADRA is believed to have been anticipating large monetary gains from the financial transactions’ services that it was interested in expanding into.
Chaudhry Nisar suspended the agreement stating that it had not been briefed to the government properly, neither had its pros and cons been discussed prior to the announcement. He further questioned the underlying rules according to which a foreign company was being given access to the national database information . He showed concern over threats to sensitive security information if the agreement went forward. NADRA had insisted that sender and receiver information would be logged onto the NADRA website and MasterCard would only be concerned with customer verification procedures.
The SBP had decided to look into the agreement and get more information from both the parties involved earlier on.
