Daily Times

For the last one week I watched my wife hooked to a Facebook Live site where this young Pakistani gentleman, sells women’s clothes (joras) and jewellery faster than the guy making pakoras and jalaybees just before Iftar.

Fascinated, I saw this loud, a trifle brash but quite funny chap, rattling off styles, materials, sizes, colors, designs and jewellery and more, as he confirmed orders and prices, connecting with his viewers, taking their names while they in turn engaged with him via texts and emojis to indicate likes and dislikes.

Fairly similar to The Shopping Network, except much more engaging, interactive and real.

Technology and a bit of innovation allowed this young man and his family, formerly, brick and mortar jewellery store owners, closed by COVID 19, to reach customers, with new business models, different channels, new products and multiple revenue streams.

One huge positive outcome of COVID is how people have been forced to use technology in innovative ways to reinvent their lives and how they did things.

For our government, COVID has starkly shown how many opportunities exist to deliver many public services without human interaction and its associated problems. Corruption and inefficiencies, perhaps being on top.

Digital technology is a game changer in governance. If deployed properly, it will completely eliminate secrecy in public decisions, making all processes transparent and accountable

Take Ehsaas for example. PM Imran’s flagship poverty alleviation program, responsible for disbursing billions in aid to those most in need.

While it’s done a good job, there are still huge opportunities to leverage technology not just to deliver these funds but to harness its power in the long run for future programs and projects.

For starters even going by non-technology traditional delivery models, it’s surprising to learn that only two commercial banks in Pakistan are authorized to distribute Ehsaas funds. Why not all banks to ensure a much larger outreach?

And more importantly why not use the massive power and footprint of Pakistan’s vast financial technology, Fintech for short, to reach a much larger number of recipients quicker, more conveniently and efficiently and above all, transparently?

Here’s a deeper dive into what’s happening for the Ehsaas Emergency Cash disbursement process.

First, it requires people to physically come to specified locations to get their cash, increasing chances of COVID infection.

A large number of beneficiaries are women and older adults who are forced to travel long distances to reach disbursement points. Large crowds, long waits and delays, are inevitable, leading to frustration and violence.

An interesting phenomenon has been the inability of accurate biometric validation, especially for women, farmers and labourers, a mandatory requirement to get cash, due to diminished and eroded fingerprints resulting from the nature of their work. This then requires them to re-verify their fingerprints at NADRA offices, mostly closed and where open, results in more inconvenience, large gatherings increasing the chances of spreading the virus.

As of now there doesn’t seem to be any involvement of the Pakistani telecom sector, Pakistan Post, private sector logistic companies and the many digital payment service providers and operators recently incensed by the State Bank, all key stakeholders.

Between them and Murad Saeed, they would do wonders.

Take for instance the Pakistani telcos, Jazz, Telenor, Ufone, Zong.

All have played a vital role in supporting the government initiative for biometric verification of their subscribers and the creation of centralized databases to monitor number of SIMs issued against a CNIC.

These telecoms also have a vast network of agents already equipped with biometric devices and trained to operate these devices under different circumstances including knowing how to raise awareness of the biometric verification process to mobile subscribers.

Under the Ehsaas Program, this massive agent network can be easily utilized not only to verify the registered beneficiaries at their doorsteps but also play a critical role in on boarding these beneficiaries for mobile wallet bank accounts and pay them directly in their accounts.

While urgent cash disbursement is critical, it is even more important to validate and verify these beneficiaries and provide the opportunity to on-board them for future Ehsaas initiatives or other government programs like Kamyab Jawan and others.

This will also greatly help the on ground and accurate complete verification of all EHSAAS beneficiaries, still a huge challenge, despite claims to the contrary.

However, were Ehsaas to adopt digital technology, it would easily reach the most remote areas through these digitally equipped agents who can verify and digitally onboard beneficiaries and save time, people and financial resources currently engaged in creating and manning disbursement points and locations.

Telecoms will have millions more people opening digital banking accounts bringing in large swathes of our population into what is called financial inclusion.

Organizations like Pakistan Post and private sector logistics companies can also take a pivotal role in the verification and disbursement of funds.

India is already using its postal service to play a critical role in verification and distribution of funds under the COVID-19 situation. Post office agents are equipped with smartphone devices and Adhaar biometric tracking systems to enable the disbursement of funds under the Adhaar Enabled Payment System (AEPS).

There’s a huge opportunity to get all these stakeholders involved, as all the required components exist, such as NADRA, our centralized biometric verification system.

As earlier stated, the State Bank recently granted licenses to many Payment System Operators and Payment System Providers to enhance the use of electronic / digital payments and the opening of mobile bank accounts to get Pakistan’s vast unranked population into the financial system. A process called Financial Inclusion.

Perhaps the greatest opportunity lies in leveraging these companies who are able to aggregate mobile bank accounts and schemes and Telco operators such as the AMA (Asaan Mobile Account), whose platform connects all 4 Telecoms and their subscribers to 12 digital banks and anyone can open a digital bank account, with a verified mobile sim in a bank of their choice, in under two minutes.

These innovative organizations have created novel ways to instantly on-board new customers and ensure account aggregation and interoperability among traditional bank and branchless banking accounts.

Such interoperable aggregators can be used to instantly verify these beneficiaries at their doorstep, even if one does not have smart phone and directly deliver funds into their digital wallets.

Ehsaas in particular and the Government in general must leverage these service providers to achieve broad access to financial services instead of only using two conventional banks with limited reach and staff to deal with low-income customers under these critical situations.

Digital technology is a game changer in governance.

If deployed properly, it will completely eliminate secrecy in public decisions, making all processes transparent and accountable. Whether it’s the tax man, public tenders, budgetary allocations, utilization of development funds, monitoring of non development expenditures or plugging leakages and minimizing corruption, the transparency it brings is revolutionary!

In Ehsaas its a minimum 20% efficiency gain which means adfitional resources for 20% more deserving households.

Additional benefits such household income, family size etc will allow us to build an array of public & social services such as schooling, healthcare, as well as track poverty alleviation.

We must leverage Pakistan’s cutting edge Fintech technology platforms to minimize misuse of precious resources.

Haider Mehdi is a Geo political commentator / blogger on National and International affairs. Formerly a media anchor, corporate leader, management consultant, start up entrepreneur and military officer, he tweets @HaiderKonsult and blogs on shrmehdi.com