As the popularity of mobile financial services is growing fast across the country, the total number of users already crossed 2 crore mark in September this year, according to a recent data of Bangladesh Bank.
Earlier, the number of the account holders under MFS crossed 1 crore in November last year.
The service mostly expanded in the rural areas to bring the unbanked people under the network, a senior executive of the central bank told the Dhaka Tribune.
Bangladesh Bank data shows the number of the registered clients stood at 2 crore in September with an increase of about 8% from August while the number of active accounts stood at 94 lakh.
The number of daily average transactions increased by over 17% to 18,07,052 in September from 15,43,086 in August this year.
The daily average money transactions also rose to Tk333 crore last month from Tk248 crore in the previous month.
As the people’s confidence and trust on the services gradually increased following the Bangladesh Bank’s strict monitoring, which virtually resulted in increasing the mobile account users, said K M Abdul Wadood, general manager of Payment Systems Department of the central bank.
“Mobile transaction gains widespread popularity as it helps in reducing wastage of time. Although frauds and forgeries still remain in the banking sector, clients should know how to maintain secrecy of their PIN numbers used in mobile account,” he said.
With the growing figure of mobile account users, amount of cash-in transactions, cash-out transactions, salary disbursement and utility bill payments through mobile banking service also rose significantly in the last 10 months, according to the central bank data.
Amount of cash-in transactions rose to Tk4,000 crore in September this year from Tk2,000 crore in November last year while cash-out transactions rose to Tk3,600 crore from Tk2,000 crore during the same period.
Salary disbursement through mobile account improved to around Tk70 crore in September from Tk20 crore in November last year.
Amount of inward remittance transactions remained in the level of Tk3 crore in September, which was up to Tk4 crore in November last year.
Significant rise witnessed in utility bill payment system as it rose to Tk158 crore in September, which was hovering around Tk1 crore only in November, 2013.
Inward remittance transactions, however, remained at the level of Tk3 crore during the last 10 months as remittance inflow into the country was slower due to fall in manpower export and sluggish investment environment, said a senior executive of a private bank.
Currently, 19 banks are providing the MFS out of 28 banks got licenses for introducing this service.
Bangladesh Bank has been awarded Alliance for Financial Inclusion Policy Award for its role to promote MFS in the event of the 2014 AFI Global Policy Forum held on September 9 at Port of Spain in Trinidad and Tobaggo.