KARACHI: Telenor Pakistan has announced partnership with Alipay for digitalisation of payments by the end of the year.

Telenor CEO Irfan Wahab Khan, said payment transactions in Pakistan will start on Alipay, a payment application of Ali Baba Group, by the end of 2018. He was talking to media after a motivational session with differently-able persons at NOWPDP on Wednesday.

Telenor has developed Open Mind program, which trains differently-abled persons and gets them employed in the industry.

“Nearly 50 people get employment every year, and 250 people have been employed in the five years since this program started running,” he said. “Majority of them are employed by Telenor at call centres, software development, and app development.”

Khan said mobile penetration has saturated in the country, but there was scope of increasing 4G network. “We are increasing our 4G network by putting new 4G sites every hour, and will cover 80 percent of our network under 4G coverage by the end of the year,” he added.

According to the Telenor CEO, nearly five million people in Pakistan were using their mobile app “khushhal zameedar” developed for the education of farmers, who were benefitting from it by increasing their production by 10 to 15 percent.