Kathmandu, January 9, 2018: Federation of Computer Association of Nepal (CAN Federation) on Tuesday hosted an interaction program among stakeholders and experts of the digital payment industry of Nepal to discuss challenges and the way forward for the e-commerce development in Nepal.
Binod Dhakal, Immediate Past President of Federation of Computer Association of Nepal (CAN Federation), Ranjit Poddar, General Secretary of CAN Federation, Amit Agrawal, CEO of Khalti Digital Wallet, Asgar Ali, CEO of eSewa, and Suraj Panday, General Manager at IME Digital among others participated the program that was held at CAN Secretariat, Khusibu, Kathmandu.
It was a preliminary discussion session organized to find the root cause of the problem for the desired Payment Gateway in Nepal. The session tried to gather ideas on how to shape the payment future of Nepal. Major challenges to implement E-Commerce in Nepal were discussed on the occasion.
The participants pointed out that the lack of sufficient mobile network coverage, lack of access to finance and e-commerce literacy, lack of enough payment gateways, difficulties in cross-border money transfer, lack of adequate logistics and transportation infrastructure, lack of a proper addressing system for the house are the major challenges to implement e-commerce.
Similarly, the participants also discussed the plan of action for e-commerce development in Nepal. They brought up a single shared vision for national e-commerce development in Nepal. Formation of apex coordination committee to facilitate all policy makes related to e-commerce, accelerating measures to increase financial inclusion in Nepal, allowing payment service providers and fully operating them to offer more competitive products to meet the need of consumers, developing and operating National Switch were major highlights of the program.
The experts also discussed who the major stakeholders will be, and what roles they will be playing. More than 18 stakeholders were identified on the occasion, including the Ministry of Commerce, Ministry of Finance, Nepal Rastra Bank, Ministry of Information and Communication, Ministry of Science, Technology, and Environment, and CAN Federation among others.
The necessity to have a verified portal by the Ministry of Commerce so as to make exporting Nepali goods outside easier was also pointed out during the program, and the necessity of coming up with plans to encourage merchants to go online.
