BPO loses ground to pvt card operators

The postal cash card has become a dead horse as stiff competition from private operators and slow decision-making have hit sales, sources said.
Data available with the Bangladesh Post Office (BPO), showed that both sales of cards and total income from the segment had drastically fallen since its inception in 2011.
Total cards issued by the office came down to only 4,000 in the just-concluded financial year, which was 8,000 in 2013-14, according to the BPO.
The sales were 16,000 in 2012-13 and 36,000 in 2011-12 FY.
Income of the BPO from the segment has also declined. The BPO earned Tk 0.34 million in the last fiscal year, down from Tk 4.66 million in the corresponding period, the data showed.
Sources at the BPO said whatever cards issued were mostly to the beneficiaries of the government projects like employment generation for the extreme poor by Disaster Management and Relief.
"Bureaucratic complicacy has impacted our success and prospects," a Deputy Post Master General (DPMG) of the BPO told the FE preferring anonymity.
"People hardly know about our services. If we could widely promote our services, then issuance of the card would significantly increase. Besides, unnecessary delay in taking decisions is also responsible for the current situation," he added.
"We have signed a co-branding agreement with the state-owned Sonali Bank recently to popularise the cash card, but due to poor marketing campaign drive, we could not succeed," the senior postal official told the FE.
"Private operators-mainly the banks are aggressively marketing their debit, credit and other card businesses and widely publicising their services. But we could never launch any publicity of our services. So, how can we succeed?"
"Most of the time, many of our 1,346 point of sale (POS) machines remain inoperative. This is also responsible for the situation," another official said.
Director General (DG) of BPO Humayun Kabir said his office is considering taking some positive measures to popularise the cash card.
"We are actively considering adopting some new policies like signing agreement with the government to provide all types of allowances given to different level of people by national and international organisations through postal cash card, which will help boost sales of our cash cards," he added.
"Some other initiatives including broadcasting and quality services are also under active consideration of the high-ups of the government. If all these initiatives are implemented, we believe the situation will be changed soon," Mr Kabir said.
He claimed that transaction through postal cash cards had been proved to be a secured one and service charges of postal cash card were lower than those of other operators.
"This will be an added advantage compared with our competitors," he added.
The BPO introduced postal cash card on March 26, 2010, which started its commercial operation in July 2011.
The BPO issues a card in exchange of only Tk 40 and it requires only Tk 5.0 in balance to keep the cards active.
Anyone can enjoy the cash transaction through postal cash card in automatic teller machine (ATM) using the network of 26 commercial banks.
    [email protected]