Brokers\' unwillingness threatens to derail mobile trading

Share trading on mobile phones is yet to attract desired number of investors as many brokers are not willing to provide the service without fees, insiders said.
The Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) launched the much-awaited DSE-Mobile share trading service on March 9 aiming to help enhance share trading through using the mobile application.
The DSE announced that investors having BO (beneficiary owner) accounts are supposed to trade in shares on their mobile phones and also get access to required information without any change for a certain period.
On the day of the service's launch, the DSE authority provided a limit of registration to 5,000 investors.
As of March 24, 2016, only 674 investors were able to get registered for doing mobile telephony-based trading.
On Thursday, the DSE logged 148 orders through DSE Mobile.
"Brokerage firms have to employ manpower to facilitate such trading on mobile phones. Under the present market situation, it's not possible to provide the service without charging any fee," said a senior official of a leading brokerage firm preferring anonymity.
The DSE officials said the premier bourse waived the registration fee of Tk 500 for DSE-Mobile users for a certain period of time.
"Brokers are the distributors of DSE-Mobile. They will get an incentive for providing the service. Those who are reluctant to provide the service will lag behind in future," said an official of the premier bourse.  
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