Badrul Ahsan :
The overall volume of mobile financial services (MFS) transactions surged sharply in recent months despite central bank’s attempt to lower the transaction limit to curb illegal channel of remittance.
To stop illegal use of MFS from February 1, 2017, the central bank brought down the daily ceiling of mobile cash-in to Tk15,000 from Tk25,000, and slashing the maximum cash-out limit to Tk10,000 from Tk25,000.
The monthly maximum cash-in limit was slashed to Tk100,000 from Tk150,000 and the maximum monthly cash-out limit was brought down to Tk 50,000 from Tk150,000.
According to Bangladesh Bank (BB) data, The number of registered mobile bank accounts stood at 53.7 million by the end of June and the average daily value of mobile financial services (MFS) transactions broke the Tk1,000 crore barrier in June.
The figure reached through an average of six million daily transactions with 18 percent higher than 4.9 million daily transactions in May (amounting to Tk 844.23 crore).
MFS enables consumers to obtain financial account information and conduct transactions with their financial institution using mobile banking services, and to make payments, transfer money, or pay for goods and services through mobile payments.
The banking method is growing in popularity in Bangladesh. At present, 17 of the 19 banks granted permission to run MFS and are providing services and of these, Brac Bank’s bKash and Dutch Bangla Bank’s Rocket topped the list in service providing.
Former BB Governor Atiur Rahman introduced MFS.
According to the central bank data, the number of registered mobile bank accounts stood at 53.7m by the end of June, up from 52.6m in May. Among the registered accounts, the number of active mobile banking account users stood at 27.4m.
Industry insiders said the BB’s move hardly had any negative impacts on the overall volume of MFS transactions as the users who previously used 10 SIMs for their transactions now have 15-20 SIMs.
“That’s why the number of daily transactions might have increased,” a senior BB official told The New Nation on Thursday.
“Our move to curb illegal channeling of remittance most probably failed as the mobile money transaction agents are now adopting new techniques to keep their transactions intact,” he added.
“It is also true that our banking services are yet to reach the door step of mass people. So, it is quite natural that the people would avail the better services. None will be able to stop it.”
The latest central bank data also showed that the inward remittance through MFS has increased by almost 10 percent to Tk 8.31 crore in June from Tk 7.56 crore in May.
According to the BB data, of the different categories in MFS payments, the service of salary disbursement benefitted the month-on-month increase by 58.73 percent.
An amount of Tk 666 crore was disbursed as salaries through the MFS channel in June, up from Tk 419.65 crore in May.
