LAHORE – A social media post claiming about Pakistan’s central bank imposing restriction on payments to international tech giants, Google and Facebook has stirred anxiety among people linked to the IT industry and freelancing.
The post with the shocking information was first shared by an “X” user named Fatir Siddiqui, who claims to be a Karachi-based social media influencer.
“No Facebook and Google payments through credit card,” reads his original post wherein it has attributed for it to the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP).
A number of users perturbed by his post reached the comment section with one asking as: “Seriously? How do we pay for our Google accounts?”.
However, some stayed away from believing it and asked him to tell the source for this information. However, Fatir Siddique kept mum, leaving the social media users in unsettled situation.
Amid this uncertainty, Daily Pakistan contacted various banks to check the veracity of the information. Sources in different banks denied receiving any such instructions from the State Bank of Pakistan.
They said currently there were no changes in credit card operations across the country as the people can use them as per the existing guidelines.
Also last year, reports had emerged about stopping certain payments to Google by SBP – only to be later dismissed by the central bank as “baseless and misleading”.
1/2 Recent news in some sections of media about stopping certain payments to Google by #SBP, are baseless and misleading. SBP strongly refutes all such assertions. See PR: https://t.co/OOnQBrQVoX pic.twitter.com/Rx11bobDLB
— SBP (@StateBank_Pak) November 26, 2022
Responding to reports claiming that “Google Play Store services would no longer be available to Pakistani users from December 2022 as the SBP had suspended the direct carrier billing (DCB) mechanism”, the central bank in a statement dated November 26, 2022, said: “The fact is that in order to facilitate the domestic entities, the 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 USD 100,000 per invoice. Such services include, Satellite Transponder, International Bandwidth/ Internet/ Private Line Services, Software License/ Maintenance/ Support, and service to use electronic media and databases.”
