Govt team visits Qcoom office to check if operations can be reopened

A team of the commerce ministry has inspected the office of e-commerce platform Qcoom to check if its operations can be resumed.
The eight-member team, formed recently, visited the Qcoom office at Tejgaon in Dhaka on Monday, said a senior official.
However, the team during inspection did not find expected information from the authorities of the platform, the official added.
The government body also visited two warehouses of Qcoom in the Tejgaon area, said a source in the ministry, adding that operations of the e-commerce platform had remained stopped.
After inspection, the team will now submit its report including findings with necessary recommendations to take the next course of action in this regard.
Initially, some 6,721 customers of Qcoom online shopping are expected to get over Tk 590 million out of the total Tk 1.65 billion that remains stuck up with Foster Payments, according to a partial list jointly prepared by Qcoom and Foster Payments.
The payback move has been taken as per decision of a recent commerce ministry meeting. The meeting reached a positive outcome through joint regulation among the meeting participants on refund of online platform Qcoom fund.
In the meeting, representatives from the law ministry, central bank, police, Qcoom and Foster were present.
The meeting instructed e-commerce platform Qcoom and its payment gateway Foster to submit a list of the customers within January 10.
The Qcoom and Foster jointly submitted the partial list involving Tk 590 million against 6,721 transactions.
The digital commerce cell (DCC) of the commerce ministry extended the deadline for submitting the full list of customers of Qcoom by January 16 - but the e-commerce platform failed to submit the detailed list by the stipulated time.
On June 30, 2021, the central bank introduced an escrow service on payment to e-commerce platforms.
Since the issuance of a circular on October 14 last year over the botched e-commerce issue, over Tk 5.05 billion had been paid to the payment gateways by the customers concerned against goods they had ordered.
Of the amount, the payment gateways have already settled over Tk 2.91 billion to the online marketplaces.
The remaining amount of over Tk 2.14 billion got stuck in the different service-providing firms, including SSL, shurjoMukhi, Foster, bKash, Nagad, and Southeast Bank Ltd.
Of the 2.14 billion stuck-up amounts, over Tk 1.65 billion of Qcoom online shopping has been stuck up with Foster Payments and over Tk 485 million has been stuck in other payment gateways, according to a central bank letter.

rezamumu@gmail.com