Bangladesh Bank on Tuesday decided to postpone the launching of interoperable transaction among mobile financial service (MFS) providers and banks, citing incomplete technical issues.
The four MFS providers, including bKash of Brac Bank, MCash of Islami Bank, U-cash and Al Arafa Islami Bank’s Islamic Wallet, were notified were by the central bank about the decision on the day.
Bangladesh Bank officials said attempts to connect mobile banking and bank accounts were not yet successful.
The main reason for the postponement, they said, was that some technical works such as debugging, could not be completed, as there were still errors in some places.
But they also remained hopeful that the service would be launched soon.
Spokesman and executive director of Bangladesh Bank Md Serajul Islam acknowledged this to the media, adding that it was not possible to enable transaction between MFS and bank accounts.
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As per directives issued by the Bangladesh Bank’s Payment System Department on October 22, all MFS providers and banks have to mandatorily introduce such interoperable transactions within March 31.
The central bank also directed the MFS and banks not to introduce any new charges on their customers for the new service.
Only the existing charges will be applicable on the customers, it said adding that the MFS and banks will charge a certain fee to be fixed by Bangladesh Bank on the organization level.
According to statistics of Bangladesh Bank, now 92.9 million people have an MFS account and some 1 million people are working as their agents across the country.
In August this year, some Tk41,000 crore was transacted through MFS while Tk104 crore was received as remittance from non-resident Bangladeshis through this service.
Different organisations have provided salary of Tk1,063 crore to their employees through the MFS while payment of Tk1060 crore was made to pay sellers by customers.
Customers of different utility services paid Tk908 crore to the service providers as utility bills.