Mobile Financial Service market requires a large amount of investment and new skills to create more competition among service providers, observed analysts.
The observation came at a training workshop on “Mobile Financial Services in Bangladesh” held in the capital yesterday.
Senior Executives from several banks participated in the workshop organised by Financial Excellence Limited.
“New banks could not create much competition for the old ones, nor could they bring new products for the clients due to not having adequate investment,” said Mamun Rashid, an economic analyst and a former banker.
Mobile banking operators should run their business in a way that will help attract right kind of companies to partner with banks, suggested Rashid.
Drastic reduction in call rates did not help the cellphone operators to invest enough money into connectivity improvement and new product development, observed the analyst.
He said if the old and large mobile banking operators are not provided help, new operators entering the market may not sustain for long.
Instead of giving licence to too many operators, Bangladesh Bank should ensure that the old ones are doing their job properly..
At least two large operators bKash and Dutch Bangla Bank have invested a large sum of money into building platform, network and recruitment of people. They are either incurring loss or making marginal profitable.
A presentation over the mobile financial services made by Mamun Rashid showed that 85% of mobile transactions are being done as OTC (over the counter), mostly without proper tracking of source and destination.
Accounts are being opened without proper source verification or on the basis of false records including forged NID (national identity).
The number of mobile banking clients increased to 2.86 crore in June 2015.
Till now 28 banks have been allowed to operate mobile money transactions, of which 20 have launched the business.
Brac Bank-owned bKash holds more than 85% market share while Dutch Bangla Bank controls a little above 10% market share. Another 18 banks together enjoy less than 5% market shares.
