Bangladesh Post Office (BPO) in partnership with a leading mobile operator is considering widening the Electronic Money Transfer Service (EMTS) across the country, officials said.
The BPO has already started talks with Banglalink to expand the quality service and its coverage areas all over the country.
"Now the EMTS is available in 2,750 out of 9,861 post offices across the country. After the expansion, people will get the service where the network of Banglalink is available," a senior BPO official told the FE on condition of anonymity.
"Due to some technical problems we could not be able to bring all the post offices of the country under the EMTS coverage," he said adding: "But the government has now planned to join hands with Banglalink to expand the same making it a 24-hour speedy service," he said.
There was a demand for quick transfer of money to locations where the beneficiaries can collect and use it instantly. With this purpose in view, BPO launched a new money order service named EMTS, commonly known as Mobile Money Order Service, on March 26, 2010.
For the mobile-based system, the post offices will charge Tk 20 for the first Tk 1,000 and Tk 10 for each of the next Tk 1,000. Besides, Tk 7.00 will be charged as electronic cost. Anyone can send money order worth Tk 50,000 in the maximum at a time.
To avail this service, an interested sender will have to fill up a form mentioning his or her name, address and mobile phone number and also the name and address of the recipient.
The money order issuer post office will send the data to the central server, which will in turn send an automatically-generated personal identification number (PIN) through a short message service (SMS) to the mobile phone of the sender.
The sender then will tell or send the PIN number to the recipient through SMS. However, a secret code for the recipient is a must for withdrawing money from the post office nearby.
