Cash transaction through mobile banking system has increased manifold ahead of Eid as people want to secure the money they transfer, operators and customers said.
They said sending money to near and dear ones to help them buy Eid gifts has also helped boost the transactions.
The daily average transactions have increased by ten to fifteen times in the last one weak, according to bankers and other electronic money transferring operators.
They predicted that the transactions will further spiral up in the next two to three days-just before Eid.
"Cash transaction through our mobile banking system has increased by more than ten times in the last few days. The transactions will further increase a day or two before Eid," a high official of Dutch Bangla Bank Ltd told the FE preferring anonymity.
"Cash transactions through mobile banking system usually increase ahead of Eid, but the scenario of this year is significantly different from previous years," he added.
"People mostly send the money to their near and dear ones to buy Eid gifts and also for doing pre-Eid shopping," he added.
Another high official of bKash, a BRAC Bank concern, preferring anonymity, said all of their officials are busy providing support to their local agents.
"We could not imagine that there would be such a big jump in cash transactions through bKash. Most probably people prefer to transfer their cash safely through mobile banking, fearing incidents like street mugging, snatching and stealing," he added.
According to the bKash official, middle-income group people and lower-income people are the major users of the mobile banking system.
However, the private operators wanted to disclose neither amount nor the number of transactions to maintain their business secrecy.
Md Zakir Hossain, Deputy Post Master Genertal (DPMG) of Bangladesh Post Office (BPO) said on an average 3,000 transactions happened through their Electronic Money Transfer System (EMTS) for the last ten days.
He said people usually come to take services of EMTS in case of larger amount of transactions due to security reason. "The average number of our daily transaction was around 500 to 600. But our per day average transactions in the last one week jumped around 3, 000," he added.
Talking to this correspondent, Altamas Ahmed Sufi, a deputy director of the Bangladesh Bank (BB), who has come to BRAC Bank for mobile money transfer, said he is sending money to two of his sisters to enable them to buy clothes for their kids as Eid gift.
"Earlier, I would buy clothes from Dhaka and would send those to my sisters through courier services, but this year I'm sending the cash to them, so that they can buy clothes as per their choice," he added.
Meanwhile, according to central bank data, all the public and private operators transacted Tk1,157.62 billion in the last one year (April, 2014 to March, 2015) through 699.9 millions of transactions.
The Bangladesh Bank (BB) data also revealed that as of March 2015, the number of mobile banking agents across the country stood at 0.469 million.
Some 19 players, mostly private commercial banks, have received clearance from the BB to operate, the BB data showed.
© 2024 - All Rights with The Financial Express
