Bangladesh now leads the way in the mobile financial service platform, globally.
That was the highly positive finding of a study conducted by Inter Media, using funding from the Gates Foundation.
It is clear that mobile banking is the future, and the tremendous growth in registered clients for mobile banking shows a significant leap forward in financial inclusion in Bangladesh.
For too long, certain sectors of the population have been marginalised and excluded from mainstream banking services.
Mobile banking is now reaching out to those groups who have often found it hard to access financial services in the past -- women, and lower income groups.
It is a signal of progress that Bangladesh offers mobile banking at the lowest cost in the world.
Conventional banks, because of their high overhead costs of operating, generally do not find it feasible to accommodate the poor and underprivileged, as these low-income clients find it difficult to maintain a minimum balance required to make maintaining an account worthwhile.
Mobile banking, on the other hand, does not have these stringent requirements.
By not needing to have physical bank branches, and by operating through agents who work on commission, MFS platforms can slash their overhead costs and make their services available to the poor.
The economy cannot move ahead without financial inclusion, which has in the past served as an excuse to prop up loss-making state-owned banks.
Now, SOBs are no longer necessary for this purpose -- almost everyone owns a mobile phone.
Bangladesh should be proud of its current place in the world in terms of MFS use, and use this technology to drive its economy into the future.