Bashundhara to bring e-wallet ‘Pocket’

Bashundhara Group, one of the leading business conglomerates in the country, is bringing digital wallet, namely ‘Pocket’, to provide digital payment service.

ABG Technologies Limited, a concern of Bashundhara Group, will operate the e-wallet and the Bangladesh Bank is going to award licence to the company very soon, said officials of the central bank.

The brand name of the company will be ‘Pocket’.

Contacted, Bangladesh Bank Executive Director and Spokesperson Md Mezbaul Haque told The Business Post that the company got no objection certificate (NOC) from the central bank as Payment service Provider (PSP) in December last year.

He also said that the central bank will provide licence to the company soon as they have completed preparing the infrastructure.

ABG Technologies Limited will get the central bank license as a PSP as per the Bangladesh Payment and Settlement System Regulation 2014.

The company proposed Bashundhara Group Managing Director Sayem Sobhan Anvir as the managing director of the new venture.

Currently, there are six licenced PSP in the market — iPay System Ltd, D Money Bangladesh Ltd, Recursion FinTech Ltd, Green and Red Technologies Ltd, Progoti System Ltd and Digital Payments Ltd.

Digital Payments Ltd, a concern of Pathao, a tech-based start-up that offers courier, e-commerce, ridesharing, and food delivery services, obtained the PSP license from the central bank in April this year.

Industry insiders said most of the licensed PSPs are not doing well due to various reasons including lack of awareness among the consumers about the benefits of e-wallet.

Previously, many companies were providing e-wallet services without any BB licence which prompted the banking regulator to instruct banks not to provide any services to the unlicensed PSPs and PSOs on March 5 of 2020.

A senior official of the central bank said that as per the regulation, about Tk 20 crore will have to be kept as paid-up capital to establish a PSP.

He said that generally, the central bank issues the NOC if it is satisfied after reviewing related documents and business certificates of the entity when they apply for licence.

“A final approval is available only if the business organisation implements its technical infrastructure as a PSP or PSO,” as per the BB official. Not only Bashundhara Group, a number of entities including E-commerce platform Chaldal.com are waiting in the wings.