IFIC Bank opens mobile banking

Bangladesh Bank (BB) Governor Atiur Rahman has underscored the need for cooperation among the central bank, telecom regulator and operators, and different delivery service providers in order to expedite mobile banking activities in the country.

The BB Governor said this while addressing the launching ceremony of mobile banking of IFIC Bank at a city hotel Monday.

Mr Rahman further said that the fair competition among the mobile banking service providers is being disrupted due to different rates of charges imposed on different banks for using USSD code.

Framing necessary policy to remove the disruption in the fair competition has become 'urgent', the governor said.

USSD (unstructured supplementary service data) is a protocol used by GSM cellular telephones to communicate with the service provider's computers.

Started in 2010, the mobile banking accelerated the financial inclusion programme in the country, he said.

Till now, the BB gave approval to 28 banks to launch the mobile banking activities; with commencement of the IFIC Bank's mobile banking, a total of 20 banks launched the service, he said.

The 20 banks appointed over 250 thousand individuals and institutions as agent; and the number of the mobile banking customers stood at 15 million; on an average, the country is witnessing transaction worth Tk 2.5 billion everyday under the mobile banking.

Suitability of the mobile banking than that of the conventional banking has been proved to take the banking services to the country's rural unbanked people, he said.

Apart from sending money from one person to another one inside the country, the mobile banking is providing different other services of carrying remittances, sent by the expatriates, to the beneficiaries, shopping, giving utility bills, purchasing rail and cricket tickets and disbursing salary to the employees, he said.

Mentioning about the BB's monitoring over the mobile banking services, he warned of taking actions like cancellation of agentship if any irregularity was found.

Mr Rahman also laid stress on maintaining necessary cautiousness about the customers' security and interest-related issues so that they are not harmed in any way.

In this connection, the governor urged all concerned to hold programme to create awareness among the customers.

Thanking the IFIC bank for launching the mobile banking, he also prayed for success of this initiative of the bank.