MFS interoperability likely from Nov 13

The interoperability facility for customers of mobile financial services (MFS) and banks is likely to kick off on November 13, according to Bangladesh Bank (BB) sources.

Talking to The Business Post, a BB official said that bKash, Rocket, mCash and another MFS company as well as 10 banks will be granted the facility to provide to their customers in the first phase.

Using this facility, a customer will be able to send or receive money from their MFS app to another MFS app. For example, anyone with a bKash account will be able to send money to another person’s account on Rocket and vice versa.

The central bank official, requesting anonymity, said experimental interoperable transactions will start next Sunday. “If the test transactions take place without any problem, the facility will be provided to general customers. The system will likely be inaugurated on November 13.

“In future, people will be able to use the interoperable transaction facility to make any government-related payments,” said the official.

Mobile financial service bKash is a subsidiary of BRAC Bank. Rocket is the MFS of Dutch-Bangla Bank Limited, which was the first bank to offer such facilities. Islami Bank Bangladesh Limited offers MFS through mCash.

The country’s Interoperable Digital Transaction Platform (IDTP), which will be known as “Binimoy,” has been developed to work like the United Payments Interface (UPI) model of India.

Binimoy is not a separate app. It will be integrated into the apps of the banks and MFS companies as a service. However, customers will have to register to use the facility.

The new service has been developed under the initiative of the ICT Division’s Innovation Design and Entrepreneurship Academy project and BB.

For now, customers will not have to pay any fee for money transfers. The central bank will later fix the fee for this service.

The interoperability facility was supposed to be officially launched on October 27, 2020. At that time, BB had also issued a circular about this. But it was postponed later.