BSS, Dhaka :
Lauding highly the mobile banking services in Bangladesh, the iconic inventor in the world of information technology, Bill Gates, said banking on digital technology would bring financial services to the world’s poor.
“Rich people take for granted loans, insurance, banking and other financial services that poor people have little access to,” Gates said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) last week before delivering the keynote address at Sibos, a banking-industry conference in Boston.
Referring to the bKash, the premier mobile banking service in Bangladesh, Gates said nearly 13 million people in Bangladesh are getting financial services, transferring money, paying in shops as bKash “exploited ubiquity of cellphones to deliver a needed service”.
Bangladesh Bank (BB) issued a guideline for mobile banking in 2009 and subsequently allowed 28 banks to offer mobile banking services. Formal mobile banking, however, began in 2011 with Brac Bank being the leader with its brand bKash.
Currently, 20 banks are providing mobile banking services to hundreds of clients across the country, particularly to the people in rural area, where access to traditional banking services is limited.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has made financial services for the poor one of its priorities, supports services that enable digital payments and charge fees as low as 1.0 percent of the transaction. The Foundation, of which Gates is co-chairman, has also invested in bKash.
Digital transactions, he said in the interview, can be processed at a fraction of the cost of financial services offered in the developed world.
With about 2.5 billion people globally who have no access to bank accounts and other financial services, the Microsoft Corp. co-founder said there is a big waiting market as well as the opportunity for technological innovation. Many of the world’s poor keep their savings in cash or physical assets such as gold or farm animals, sometimes at significant risk.
They aren’t always able to transfer money to family members in need, or receive remittances from their kin working abroad. Cash meant for one purpose often gets used up for emergencies, while the lack of borrowing options frequently sends them into debt.
“Money lenders rule your life,” but low-cost digital payment systems provide a compelling and secure alternative, Gates said. “People will have money problems, but they should have options.”
While delivering the keynote speech, Gates cited that nearly 70 percent of Bangladeshis have mobile phones when only about 15 percent of the south Asian nation’s population who has access to formal financial services.
He termed the high rate of cellphones use in Bangladesh as the “wild adoption of technology”, which is bringing in positive changes to the society.
