Business Desk :
A physically challenged college student, Kusum Khatun, is very happy as she need not walk miles for withdrawing her disability allowance, thanks to the state-run mobile financial service (MFS) Nagad.
“It was very tough for me to travel around 10 kilometres and stand in a queue to withdraw the disability allowance from Krishi Bank in Rajshahi Sadar,” she said.
But the MFS arm of the Bangladesh Post Office has eased Kusum’s suffering enabling her to withdraw the money through Nagad from any nearby MFS agent.
Kusum, a resident of Paba Upazila in Rajshahi, said Nagad has made the rural people’s life easier, facilitating them with mobile banking using basic mobile phone sets.
The state-run carrier, which sped up the overall financial inclusion in Bangladesh, has emerged as the fastest-growing MFS in the world in just about three years since its inception in January 2019, thanks to the adoption of state-of-the-art technologies, reports BSS. It is now playing a key role to digitalise the country’s financial sector riding on advanced technology and pioneering innovations. The electronic Know Your Customer (e-KYC) process introduced by Nagad, as the first of its kind in Bangladesh, for opening accounts using smartphones, replacing a time-consuming paper-based system, has emerged as the role model for the country’s financial industry.
The e-KYC is a process of opening accounts by capturing photos of both sides of the national identity (NID) card using a smartphone without visiting any office or filling up ordinary papers.
It is now being followed by other MFS operators, banks and financial companies in the country since it has brought down the cost as well as time of doing business significantly and ensured digitalisation.
