Mobile Payment, Ecommerce Ecosystem: Bangladesh

I’m pretty good at paying late fees. Keeping additional funding for my university and other utility bills has become more common rather than to go out and pay within the timeframe.

Paying from anywhere!

The phrase “go out” has other meanings too. If your office is understaffed, you can’t get out, and even if you manage time to get to some banks (because, they operate even less than our office time), maneuvering the transportation takes hours (even if you own one, I don’t), and the traffic will take almost four hours to get there and come back to your workplace. If you need to buy things, money withdrawal requires you personally being in the bank, unless you authorize someone doing your stuffs.

If you add all up, these household chores (paying all the bills, installments, money withdrawal and late fees like mine) related to money transfer, 30 man hours/month is required equating to 4 business days. Let alone, you traversing all over the city causing traffic congestion every day.

The basic understanding is about more spending, by individuals or corporations or the government, means more demand, more production, more jobs, more prosperity. When money rotates, you get the best value; everybody gets the chance of having it. There are statistics when billions of taka stay in people pocket, doesn’t get its valuation from the financial institution because, even if you want to spend, there is no mechanism, no way!

Sending money for my maid’s parents would have saved them from traveling to Dhaka every month. Thanks to SA travels, for making it easier for millions of people, unofficially. Yes, there is a great demand for it, and then if the services are not approved, people will innovate it!

If people became really aware where their money flows, they may make different decisions about how they spend their money, and communities may make different political, economic, and social choices. Right now, I wanted to buy a report from a consulting farm, legally I can’t! It’s not about that 49 USD going outside of the country, but online transactions are recorded, not the offline one.

How do you automate the whole money flow chain? If I could pay my university not leaving my office, they would have got the money in time. I could have spent some more time writing another directive for my office.

It might sound weird but African nations have developed many fold when it comes to money transaction. Think of award winning M-Pesa, the mobile payment system which works as a branchless banking service, meaning that it is designed to enable users to complete basic banking transactions without the need to visit a bank branch. This M-pesa program alone, is working in Kenya, Tanzania, Egypt, South Africa, Afghanistan and even in our neighbouring India. As wiki says “The service enables its users to: −Deposit and withdraw money, −Transfer money to other users and non-users, −Pay bills, −Purchase airtime”, the last two are already here! Telco regulator has approved it long ago!

Please compare the bank account holders with the mobile users as 19 million (most of them have three or four accounts, as these branches are yet to be centralized): 52 million. I’m impressed with all the directives on ecommerce and mobile payment from the financial regulator, Bangladesh Bank. This is the best of the both world for any financial institute starting these services! Previously banks were against telco led mobile payment systems, now they have the approval with bank led/bank focused model, but readiness is in question.

All they have to do is talk to telecommunication regulator and mobile companies integrating their modus operandi to start the services. The telco regulator have initiated the process, the financial regulator have opted for a National Payment Switch (NPS) which has to be in place in two years time creating a common platform for all the banks in internet banking and e‐commerce. There are talks on revenue sharing model on amounts being transacted, business model and MoU would dictate that. But, if you ask me, does your ISP charge you when you buy things online? You pay a flat fee for using Internet only.

They relaxed the option on setting NPS, like when NPS isn’t there, providers are allowed to use interim measures for interoperability among the existing payment networks.

What else do you want?

I’m with you, want to spare more time in productivity for the country. Let the cash roll; let everybody participate in country’s productivity. Let SMEs to start their businesses within the comfort zone of a home!

Taking away four business days – in a month does hurt the productivity!