Badrul Ahsan :
Electronic Money Transfer Service (EMTS) of Bangladesh Post Office (BPO) has been gradually losing its market share in the face of rapid expansion of various mobile money transfer services by private commercial banks and other operators, official sources said.
They said the EMTS faced a serious setback in 2013, as the number of transactions dropped by nearly 65 per cent at the end of 2013 and the market share of BPO has come down to less than 10 per cent in the financial year (FY) 2014-15.
It conducted transactions of around 3.3 million in 2011, and the number almost doubled in 2012. Then that BPO was holding almost 80 per cent of the total cash transfer within the country through electronic system.
According to BPO data, earnings from EMTS declined drastically to around Tk 110 million during the FY 2014-15 against Tk 197 million a year ago.
The money transfer service is losing its market share to the private operators mainly due to its insufficient number of service points, lack of required publicity and above all bureaucratic tangles, BPO Deputy Postmaster General (DPMG) Jakir Hasan Anu told the New Nation on Tuesday.
“Private banks and other operators have extended similar services vigorously over the years and spread to even in the small grocery shops throughout the country, which we could not. Mainly this limitation has hit our profit hard,” he said.
The DPMG said BPO has introduced EMTS only to its 2,700 offices out of nearly 10,000 across the country till its inception, whereas the private banks are rapidly expanding their services everyday.
“People nowadays are not interested to go to a distant post office to receive money as they are getting the same service at their doorsteps through other operators. But, transfer of large amount of money through EMTS has increased recently due to security reasons,” he added.
He, however, said, “In most cases, we observe that people bother little about security of their transactions involving small amount of money. But in case of large amount transactions, BPO is still on top of their choice.”
“Besides, people know little about EMTS due to inadequate publicity. It is another reason behind their poor response to our service,” he said.
He, however, said a plan of mass expansion of EMTS at grassroots level is underway through which BPO expects to regain its lost position soon.
“We have received go-ahead from the ministry concerned to appoint our agents across the country. Some proposals are under our scrutiny. We hope after appointing agents, EMTS would revolutionize the country’s financial transaction system once again, as its service charges are much lower than those of the private operators.”
According to the Bangladesh Bank (BB) data, the amount of daily transactions through the private banks’ mobile money transfer services has reached nearly Tk 20 million.
Twenty eight private banks have taken permission from the central bank to operate the service, and some more are on the queue. Of the banks, nineteen have already started their operations.
