Home ›› 15 Mar 2022 ›› Front
Shirin Sultana Shimul, a housewife from Mirpur in the capital, opened a mobile banking account to facilitate financial transactions, but her recent experience to this end is somewhat harrowing.
“I cashed in some amount to my mobile account from an agent’s shop. Two hours later, a fake representative of the MFS Company claimed that my account had been hacked, and wanted to know my account details including the PIN number which I shared in true sense,” said Shirin.
“Shortly, I found that my account balance was zero.”
Not only Shirin, recently another housewife from Rampura Mahfuza Akhter, experienced also a different kind of fraudulence.
Similarly, Magura school student Md Nahyan said he got scholarship money through mobile banking. He had Tk 1100 in his MFS account.
“Suddenly, I found my account balance is zero. When contacted, the MFS operator said it was a technical error,” he said.
There is no end to deceptions, technical flaws and clutters in the mobile banking transactions of thousands of such customers.
An unscrupulous section of people are always lying in wait to cash in on situations in which ordinary people bear the brunt of it.
A wide range of complaints of harassment and fraudulence have been lodged with the Directorate of National Consumers Right Protection.
The consumers deserve the rights to be protected and empowered in an age of innovation.
Under such circumstances, World Consumer Rights Day will be celebrated in the country today (Tuesday).
Each year 15 March is observed as the day for consumer movement to highlight the pressing issues facing consumers globally.
Fair Digital Finance is the theme World Consumer Rights Day this year.
In 2020, the number of registered mobile money accounts grew by 12.7 per cent to 1.2 billion globally.
At the same period in Bangladesh, the number of accounts’ growth was 25 per cent and the registered mobile financial services (MFS) account number was 99.34 million. At the end of 2021, the number of MFS account grew by 12.11 per cent to 111.47 million.
The regulators and providers using appropriate safeguards can protect consumers whilst continuing to foster innovation.
According to Consumer International – a membership organisation for consumer groups around the world – by 2024, digital banking consumers are expected to exceed 3.6 billion.
In the developing world, the proportion of account owners sending and receiving payments digitally has grown from 57 per cent in 2014 to 70 per cent in 2017.
Digital finance brings new opportunities but also new risks that can lead to unfair outcomes for consumers.
For quick and easy financial transaction all the bank clients are getting online services in Bangladesh.
According to the Bangladesh Bank, as on September 2021, the number of bank accounts is 123.56 million.
As the digital retail economy is growing during the pandemic that came as a blessing in disguise, the number of complaints against some e-commerce entities was skyrocketing.
Until Fiscal Year 2018-19, there were around 2,000 complaints against e-commerce firms. The number went double by 4,325 in the next fiscal.
Aggrieved customers filed 8,992 complaints in FY21, according to the DNCRP.
A series of complaints against e-commerce and digital transaction businesses were also filed in the first six months of the current fiscal.
The consumers demand that the digital finance should be inclusive and safe where there will data protection and privacy.
According to Commerce Minister Tipu Munshi, the DNCRP has raided 49,096 organisations and punished 1,20,102 businesses for various crimes from FY10 to current fiscal year.
“The total amount of fines collected through the market operation was Tk 82.45 crore. During this time, a total of 56,124 written complaints have been received from consumers, and of these, 51,859 were settled,” he said on Monday.
“A hotline service for consumers has been launched, so marginal consumers can lodge complaints there. The hotline number is 16121.”
Director General of DNCRP AHM Safiquzzaman told The Business Post there is a lot of work to do when it comes to protecting consumer rights.
“We will also work with the service sector outside of products. Recently, digital transactions have increased, especially in collaboration with the Bangladesh Bank, to ensure financial sector services including e-commerce, MFS and online banking,” he said.
“The buyers in this sector are being deceived, and so their rights should be protected.”
This World Consumer Rights Day will spark the first-ever global conversation on the consumer vision for fair digital finance.
Digital technologies are reshaping payments, lending, insurance, and wealth management, thus becoming a key enabler for consumers of financial services.
However, in recent years exacerbated by the pandemic, consumers are increasingly exposed to scams, frauds and data malpractices.
Consumers who experience economic hardship are particularly vulnerable to these harms.
The consumer movement marks 15th March as the day of raising global awareness about consumer rights and needs.
Celebrating the day is a chance to demand that the rights of all consumers are respected and protected, and to protest against market abuses and social injustices which undermine those rights.
The World Consumer Rights Day was inspired by President John F Kennedy, who sent a special message to the US Congress on 15th March 1962 in which he formally addressed the issue of consumer rights.
He was the first world leader to do so. The consumer movement first marked that date in 1983 and now the day is observed every year to mobilise action on important issues and campaigns.
