Fall in transactions
Mobile financial service
Tareque Moretaza
The value of the total number of daily transactions through mobile financial services (MFS) declined by 3.48 per cent to Tk 394 crore 58 lakh in April from Tk 408 crore 58 lakh in March, according to the latest data of the Bangladesh Bank (BB).
In March, MFS transactions increased by 11.92 per cent to Tk 408 crore per day, according to the latest BB data, while the figure was Tk 365.28 crore in February.
The total number of transactions increased by 15.28 per cent to 2,963,611 in March against 2,566,300 in February.
Again, other indicators registered a downward trend in the central banks data. It showed that the amount of cash out from MFS declined by 3.86 per cent and cash in by 3.93 per cent in the same period.
The transactions through mobile financial services have increased after the transaction amount crossed Tk 3 crore in December.
Referring to the sudden fall in the number of mobile transactions, one of the senior officials of the Bangladesh Banks mobile financial department told The Independent: We have launched strong monitoring of MFSthat could be the reason for the negative growth, although the amount is not significant at all.
During the prolonged political unrest in February and March, MFS witnessed a positive trend, though the number of agents and mobile wallets declined in March.
At that time, Mahfuzur Rahman, executive director of MFS of BB, had told The Independent that the growth rate had fallen because of the strong monitoring of mobile wallets during the political stalemate.
The number of mobile wallets started rising again in April, though the number declined in March. The number of agents increased by 1.1 per cent in April compared to that of March, according to BB data.
The active number of accounts also increased by 3.26 per cent.
BB launched mobile financial services in 2011 through a regulation. Any mobile phone user can make monetary transactions with the help of this service.
A mobile phone user can open a bank account at any of the 20 banks and deposit or withdraw money and enjoy many services, including making payments of utility bills.
Although 28 banks received permission for MFS, only 20 banks provided the service in March, and 19 banks in February.
Mobile financial services approved by BB (in broad categories) are: disbursement of inward foreign remittances, cash in/out using mobile account through agents/bank branches/ATMs/mobile operators outlets, person-to-business payments, such as utility bill payments and merchant payments, business-to-person payments, such as salary disbursements, dividend and refund warrant payments, vendor payments, etc.
Also included are government-to-person payments, such as elderly allowances, freedom fighter allowances, subsidies, etc., person-to-government payments, such as payments of taxes and levies, and person-to-person payments (one registered mobile account to another registered mobile account).
Other payments include microfinance, overdrawn facility, insurance premium, DPS, etc.
BB has fixed the transaction limit for the account holders of mobile financial services at a maximum of Tk 10,000 daily and a total of Tk 25,000 on a monthly basis, vide DCMPS circular no. 10/2011 of December 14, 2011.
