Home ›› 19 Jan 2023 ›› Front
From now on, anyone buying goods or taking any service from most of the micro traders and small businesses in the Motijheel area will not need cash to pay bills as they have come under a cashless transaction system.
This has been made possible due to the “Cashless Bangladesh” campaign of the Bangladesh Bank (BB). Its Governor Abdur Rouf Talukder kicked off the initiative at the central bank headquarters on Wednesday.
Ten banks, three mobile financial services (MFS) providers and three international payment service providers (PSP) are involved in this campaign at the city’s main business hub.
As part of it, they have provided QR code facilities to many micro traders and street vendors, including teashops, grocery stores, eateries, cobblers, fruit sellers, hawkers, etc. in the Motijheel area.
Customers will be able to pay the bill easily by scanning the QR codes through mobile banking applications, MFS and PSPs.
BB Executive Director and spokesperson Md Mezbaul Haque said the campaign started at Motijheel but it aims to make Bangladesh cashless. “It will gradually continue across Dhaka city and then the country.”
He said that there have been proprietary QR codes of some banks and MFS providers in the country but there was no universal QR code until now. “Now, BB has introduced Bangla QR, through which customers of any bank will now be able to make payments.”
The project aims to popularise this interoperable QR code across Dhaka city and bring hundreds of thousands of small businesses, including those from lower-income groups, under the digital transaction system.
The 10 banks involved in the QR payment system are Dutch-Bangla Bank, Mutual Trust Bank, AB Bank, Eastern Bank, Islami Bank, United Commercial Bank, The City Bank, Bank Asia, Pubali Bank and One Bank.
The three MFS providers are bKash, Islami Bank’s mCash and Dutch-Bangla Bank’s Rocket. The three international card service providers are Mastercard, Visa and American Express.
Mastercard Country Manager Syed Mohammad Kamal told The Business post that Bangla QR will significantly reduce the dependency on cash.
He said that the Cashless Bangladesh campaign will be ensured by providing easy, secure and integrated payment facilities for micro traders.
BB’s latest initiative has come at a time when the number of people carrying out transactions digitally has significantly gone up across the country mainly because of convenience.
In November, MFS transactions went up by 17.23 per cent year-on-year to Tk 92,125 crore. Credit card issuance stood at 20.87 lakh, up by 15.76 per cent year-on-year, while debit card issuance grew by 18.2 per cent to 2.95 crore.
In November 2020, for the first time, BB paved the way for micro and small traders to open merchant accounts with banks and MFS providers without a trade licence through a new policy.
Under it, they can open a merchant account with attestation from the local public representative or certification from a local professional body and the national identity card number.
