Business Desk :
Nagad, the fastest-growing mobile financial service of this kind in the world, has surpassed the 40 million users’ landmark recently. The digital financial arm of Bangladesh postal department has gone past Tk 4.0 billion mark of the daily transaction, a press release said.
Such a spectacular success by a government service in just two years of its launching has created a buzz in the industry. Nagad has earned kudos by digitalizing the disbursement of various government allowances, stipends and financial assistance during the coronavirus pandemic.
Digitalisation has made it easy to deliver the benefit to the beneficiaries, ensured transparency, and saved the government money. Nagad crossed the landmark of one crore customers just 10 months after Honorable Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina inaugurated the service on March 26, 2019. It took six months to onboard the next one crore subscribers and another seven months needed to raise the number of users from two crores to three crores. It took less than two months to add the last one crore customers, said a press release on Tuesday.
Anyone can connect to Nagad any time by simply dialling *167# from any mobile phone, which also facilitated the account opening process. The fastest account-opening system rolled out in partnership with mobile phone operators is the first of its kind globally. Earlier, Nagad created a buzz after pioneering e-KYC (know your customers) in the country’s financial sector for customer registration.
Following in the footsteps of Nagad, many financial institutions have now introduced e-KYC in customer registration.
Thanks to all of the innovative services, the volume of transactions on Nagad has been increasing as expected from the very beginning. It crossed Tk 1.0 billion mark in January 2020. At one of the events at the time, Sajeeb Wazed Joy, Prime Minister’s Information and Communication Technology Adviser, set a target of Tk 200 crore in daily transaction volume within the next one year. However, daily transaction volume doubled in December of the same year. The daily transaction crossed Tk 3.0 billion in March, and in one month, it crossed Tk 4.0 billion last week.
Posts and Telecommunications Minister Mustafa Jabbar described the rapid advancement of Nagad as a successful combination of technological innovation and the introduction of customer-friendly services.
He said, “Nagad’s success had become inevitable after it set an excellent example by ensuring the freedom of financial transactions for customers at a nominal price. I have been watching the progress of Nagad from the beginning. The example Nagad has set in delivering services from the center to the remotest parts of the country through mobile phones is, in fact, one of the best examples of the government’s digitization process. I believe Nagad will become the number one mobile financial service in the country in a very short time.”
Md Siraz Uddin, director general of Bangladesh Postal Department, congratulated all of the employees and customers of Nagad for the excellent achievement of Nagad. He said, “Nagad has revolutionised the mobile financial service in Bangladesh. The rapid expansion of the government service has made me more confident than ever that Nagad will remain as an important part of the government’s Vision for Change.”
The introduction of this innovative system has ensured transparency in one hand, reduced beneficiaries’ harassment and also reduced the cost efficiency for the government.
