DSE mobile app users declined 40 per cent year-on-year to 46,622 in FY23 amid the suspension of registration of new subscribers as registered users became inactive in the bearish market.
Alongside the number of subscribers, transactions through the app also plunged by more than 48 per cent to Tk 219.49 billion in FY23, compared to the previous fiscal year.
Turnover through the mobile app goes up and down in sync with the market's movement. In FY23, the sell-buy volume on the bourse fell 40.05 per cent to Tk 1.91 trillion, compared to FY22.
"A significant fall in daily market turnover was a major reason behind the decline in mobile transactions," said DSE acting managing director M. Shaifur Rahman Mazumdar.
The registration of new subscribers has been kept suspended for the last six months while the bourse has been working to improve its capacity to accommodate more users, DSE officials said.
In the meantime, old users stopped using the app.
As soon as an investor logs in to the app, he/she becomes an active user, but if they do not use the app for six months, they are no longer considered subscribers in the calculation of registered users.
The number is updated twice a year.
Meanwhile, the DSE is all set to resume registration of new subscribers in a month as it has already expanded app's accessibility to 150,000 users from 100,000 users.
DSE expects that the number of app subscribers will rise to the maximum limit within three months after the resumption of the registration process.
Investors will no longer have free access. They will have to pay Tk 125 a month. Existing users will gradually be brought under the pay scheme.
The exchange has a target of reaching 300,000 users through capacity expansion in the next phase, said the DSE managing director. And
Earlier, the bourse was reluctant to increase the number of mobile app users as the service was free of cost while it paid $1 to the vendor for every user a month.
Moreover, 20 per cent tax is also charged on the amount paid to the vendor. The exchange bore a cost of around Tk 140 per user per month.
The DSE managing director said many stock brokers had shown interest in using mobile app services by paying fees.
The premier bourse on March 9, 2016 launched the mobile app developed by FlexTrade Systems, a global leader in broker-neutral trading platforms.
The app is available on Google Play Store and offers features to help users track the indices and get market and company information.
Investors first need to be registered with a broker and then install the app on their mobile phones.
The app's features include market and trading statistics in real time, company information, portfolio information and company news.
Apart from executing buy and sale orders, the app provides some exclusive information, including buy or sell alerts, notifications and portfolio status to subscribers, which are not easily available on the website or via brokers' services.
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