Electronic Money Transfer Service (EMTS) of Bangladesh Post Office (BPO) is gradually losing its market share in the face of rapid expansion of various mobile money transfer services by private commercial banks (PCBs) and other operators, a high official said.
EMTS expanded swiftly across the country until last year due to its easy procedure and lower cost. Around 3.3 million transactions were conducted through the service in 2011, and the number almost doubled in 2012.
But EMTS faced a serious setback in 2013, as the number of transactions dropped by nearly 65 per cent (up to October 30).
According to BPO data, earnings from EMTS also declined drastically to nearly Tk 171 million during January-October period this year against Tk 361 million a year ago.
The money transfer service is losing its market share to the private operators mainly due to its insufficient number of service points, lack of required publicity and above all bureaucratic tangles, BPO officials said.
"Private banks and other operators have recently extended similar service to even small grocery shops throughout the country, which we could not. Mainly this limitation has hit our profit hard," BPO deputy post master general (DPMG) Jakir Hasan Anu told the FE Wednesday.
According to him, BPO has introduced EMTS only to its 2,700 offices out of nearly 10,000 across the country till its inception, whereas the private banks are rapidly expanding their services everyday.
"People nowadays are not interested to go to a distant post office to receive money. Because, they are getting the same service at their doorsteps through other operators. But transfer of large amount of money through EMTS has increased recently due to security reasons."
"In most cases, we observe that people bother little about security of their transactions involving small amount of money. But in case of large amount transactions, BPO is still on top of their choice," the DPMG informed.
"Besides, people know little about EMTS due to inadequate publicity. It is another reason behind their poor response to our service."
He, however, said a plan of mass expansion of EMTS to grassroots level is underway through which BPO expects to regain its lost position soon.
"We have received go-ahead from the ministry concerned to appoint our agents across the country. Some proposals are under our scrutiny. We hope after appointing agents, EMTS would revolutionize the country's financial transaction system once again, as its service charges are much lower than those of the private operators."
According to the Bangladesh Bank (BB) data, the amount of daily transactions through the private banks' mobile money transfer services has reached nearly Tk 10 million.
Twenty seven private banks have taken permission from the central bank to operate the service, and some more are on the queue. Of the banks, seventeen have already started their operations.
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