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BPO to launch online shopping by year end

September 11, 2011 00:00:00


Sonia H Moni The postal department is going to launch post e-shop by the end of this year to facilitate online shopping for the first time, the head of the department said. "We are going to introduce post e-shop service for the city dwellers and gradually it will be expanded across the country," Bangladesh Post office (BPO) Director General M Mobasherur Rahman told the FE Thursday. He said the e-shop will be set up at Tejgaon on three bighas of land where customers will be able to shop-from home delivery to physical purchase. Initially, it will be launched on a small scale and gradually consumers will find all sorts of essential commodities and other items in the mall. The customers will be able to pay the bills through e-pay service of postal department and all sorts of credit card including cash card for easier and faster financial transaction. He said, "The service of e-pay is yet to start. It could start by the end of this month though it was scheduled to start early this month." He said: "All the mobile subscribers will be able to get the e-pay services. Primarily, we will start this service at the city post offices and within three months, around 600 post offices will be brought under the coverage of e-pay service." A person has to open an account at post office to get the services. After opening the account, officials will install software in the account holder's mobile phone set. An account holder will be able to deposit any amount between Tk 10 and Tk 500,000 at a time in the account at post office and can pay different sorts of bills from the deposited credit. The post office will charge Tk 3 for each transaction and also charge one per cent for any cash withdrawal. At the same time, an account holder will get information through short message service (SMS). Mr Rahman said, "We floated tender for the service provider companies eight months back and evaluated proposals of eight service companies for the e-shop. Now we are at the final stage to select a company to give the work order." He expressed the hope that the selected company might take maximum three months to start the e-shop after getting work order. He added that the e-shop would help open up the way for all the existing shopping malls with the online shopping including home delivery.

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