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What’s happening with Google Play Store for Pakistani users?

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  • SBP suspends payment of $34m to int’l service providers.
  • Users will have to download Google, int’l apps through credit cards, debit cards.
  • Authorities concerned request central bank to reverse its decision. 

ISLAMABAD: The State Bank of Pakistan has suspended a payment of $34 million to international service providers after which mobile users will not be able to download Google Play Store services from December 01, 2022, The News reported Saturday.

The direct carrier billing (DCB) mechanism was discontinued by the central bank after which a payment of $34 million on an annual basis through mobile companies to international service providers, including Google, Amazon and Meta, got stuck.

Pakistani customers will now be forced to download Google and other international apps for making payments through credit cards or debit cards only. But the credit card facility is limited to a certain number of customers, so the majority of mobile users may be deprived of downloading apps from Google Play Store.

The Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication, Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) and four cellular mobile operators (CMOs) unanimously wrote a joint letter to the SBP on Friday, making a request to reverse its decision of revoking the DCB mechanism for payment of dollar fee keeping in view the liquidity crunch being faced by the country.

Top official sources confirmed to The News that Google services such as downloading apps will be unavailable. They conveyed to relevant authorities that the outstanding payment of $34 million was due, so their services for downloading of Google App Store will no more be available if the outstanding amount was not cleared.

The four mobile operators sent a joint letter to the government, stating that the telecom industry is one of the biggest contributors to foreign direct investment along with other significant contributions in the form of tax, duties and other levies.

The role of the telecom sector in expanding the agenda of Digital Pakistan cannot be ignored. Pakistan’s digital transformation is intended to benefit all social and economic sectors and thus needs engagement and facilitation from all stakeholders.

The State Bank of Pakistan revoked the IT designation of telecom operators months back. It was further advised to route cases to SBP on a case-to-case basis for subsequent approval. Consequently, the mobile operators stated that they were facing severe delays in getting approvals, resulting in disruption of critical services as they support the company in managing IT and digital infrastructure to meet all operational requirements internally and servicing its customers billing management, fraud management software, Office 365, robotics automation software and software developers as well as payments related to digital advertising on big IT platforms.

The digital economy in Pakistan has a heavy reliance on international service providers for hosting on cloud platforms, licenses required for services/platforms, security features and in many cases technical expertise to upskill the local workforce to meet international standards.

All the major players like Google, Amazon and Meta, are being impacted because of non-­payment and are most likely to discontinue their services the impact of which will be reflected in terms of telecom and internet users being unable to fulfil their needs from digital platforms including digital banking, e-Commerce, e-Education, e-Health that uses cloud infrastructure and gets licenses for both applications as well as web-based platforms that are being badly impacted. 

Distribution and monetisation of digital platforms will become extremely challenging considering the lack of distribution support and interest from the market leaders like Google, Amazon, and Apple representing Facebook. Digital marketing is the most effective channel for all brands, products and services will shrink drastically or become unavailable, thus, impacting brands, services and products beyond the digital space.

“Any potential outage of such digital services due to non-payments would create a lot of negativity in the world about Pakistan in this age of social media and should be avoided at any cost,” stated the letter.

The letter concluded: “It is pertinent to mention here that we all understand the prevailing challenge of worsening economic conditions of the country and thus are open to working in an amicable way with the Regulator (SBP); as we are already working with them in case of the telecom sector imports related transactions to navigate through these testing times.”

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TikTok offers a special in-app experience to commemorate the release of Jimin’s second solo album, MUSE, by BTS.

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Calibre fans everywhere get the chance to interact with only-available content, take part in challenges, and get temporary rewards by visiting the #Jimin_Who hub. To find a time-limited, exclusive profile frame, search for relevant terms like “Jimin” and “BTS.” You’ll be provided with difficulties. Moreover, the hub offers high-calibre content produced by Jimin, such as his solo and collaborative works, Fan Spotlight, which highlights exceptional ARMY members and their works, and an immersive event honouring Jimin’s second album, MUSE.

TikTok is committed to enabling fans and artists to interact and create, as this programme demonstrates. The TikTok community worldwide is expected to find resonance in this experience, as BTS is one of the most popular accounts and #kpop is one of the fastest-growing genres on the platform, producing 59.8 million posts and 602 billion video views.

BTS (@bts_official_bighit) broke numerous records throughout their more than ten-year tenure, becoming the fourth-largest artist account on TikTok and cementing their status as pop icons of the twenty-first century.

The group’s hashtags, #bts and #bts_official_bighit, are part of 94.1 million creator videos and 33.4 million videos, respectively, and have over 65.5 million followers and 1.4 billion likes. Because of his solo work, Jimin has become an international phenomenon, inspiring millions of creator videos and views.

In over 22.9 million creator videos, hashtags pertaining to #jimin have appeared. The group’s TikTok dance video, which was viewed over 36.2 million times and received over 8.6 million likes, was inspired by Jimin’s #1 song, “Like Crazy,” which he released last year after his debut solo album FACE. The song inspired over 300,000 creator videos. The MUSE pre-release single “Smeraldo Garden Marching Band (feat. Loco)” has received 2.5 million likes and 11 million views on Jimin’s recent exclusive behind-the-scenes video.

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63,000 Instagram accounts are deleted by Meta

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The “Yahoo boys,” a group of Nigerian internet scammers, are well-known for their elaborate schemes, which include posing as needy individuals or promising phenomenal returns on investments from prominent Nigerian figures.

63,000 Instagram profiles, according to a statement by Meta, which also mentioned that 7,200 Facebook pages, groups, and accounts that offered advice on con artistry had been deleted.

The organisation also eliminated a smaller, more tightly-knit network of about 2,500 computers that belonged to a collective of about 20 people.

The prospect of compromising photos—fake or real—being released is used in sexual extortion, or “sextortion,” to coerce victims into paying to halt the abuse.

Meta notified the scammers’ attempts to the U.S. National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, as most of the scammers’ attempts were unsuccessful and largely targeted adults, but there were also attempts made against kids.

The disruption of these networks was not new, according to Meta officials, who also disclosed the current operation in an effort to “raise awareness.”

Governments, particularly lawmakers in the US, where Meta is headquartered, have increased pressure on the social media behemoth to address allegations that its executives have disregarded data indicating that its services are harmful to children. As a result, the company has been under defensive fire in recent years.

One American senator charged Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, and other prominent figures in the social media space earlier this year, saying they had “blood on their hands” for not doing enough to shield young people from the growing risks of sexual predatory content on their platforms.

Additionally, in an effort to raise awareness of these risks, the U.S. Surgeon General has advocated for social media apps to have a warning label attached.

A part of the national penal code that dealt with fraud ineffectively gave rise to the term “419 scams” for Nigerian con artists.

Online frauds have increased in number, with individuals responsible operating from wealthy neighbourhoods, college dorms, or impoverished suburban areas while the nation of more than 200 million people experiences increasing economic woes.

A few users, according to Meta, were giving advice on how to pull off scams.

It stated, “Among their attempts were links to photo collections that they could use to create fictitious accounts, as well as offers to sell scripts and instructions to deceive people with.”

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Google abandons its plans to do rid of cookies in Chrome

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The significant change in course comes as a result of worries expressed by advertisers, who provide the majority of the company’s revenue, that their capacity to gather data for customised advertisements will be restricted due to the removal of cookies from the most widely used browser in the world, leaving them reliant on Google’s user databases.

Due to worries that Google’s proposal would stifle competition in the digital advertising market, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority has also carefully examined the proposal.

“Rather than discontinuing third-party cookies, we would launch a fresh experience in Chrome that empowers individuals to make a knowledgeable decision that is applicable to all of their online browsing, and they could modify that decision whenever they choose,” stated Anthony Chavez, vice president of the Privacy Sandbox project, which is supported by Google, in a blog post.

A major objective of the Privacy Sandbox project, which was started in 2019 by Alphabet (GOOGL.O), opens new tab unit, is to phase out third-party cookies while simultaneously improving online privacy and boosting digital enterprises.

Though they can potentially be used for unauthorised monitoring, cookies are information packets that websites and advertisers use to identify specific online users and follow their browsing patterns.

Within the European Union, publishers are required to obtain explicit agreement from users before storing cookies, as per the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Cookie deletion is another feature that most popular browsers offer.

While continuing to fund the Privacy Sandbox programme, Chavez stated that Google was collaborating on the new strategy with publishers, privacy organisations, and regulators like the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office and CMA.

Many responded differently to the announcement.

Analyst Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf of eMarketer stated in a statement, “Advertising stakeholders won’t have to prepare to quit third-party cookies cold turkey.”

One example of how cookies can hurt consumers is when they display predatory advertisements that target specific demographics, according to Lena Cohen, a staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. According to Cohen, Google’s choice to keep accepting third-party cookies is a direct result of their advertising-driven business model, even though other major browsers have been banning them for years.

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