A small printed QR code now prominently sits near the counter of almost every shop and market stall across Dhaka. Bangla QR, Bangladesh Bank’s interoperable payment system, is one of the most significant pieces of financial infrastructure that the country has built in years.
Any customer, irrespective of which bank or mobile financial service they are using, can pay any merchant by scanning just one QR code. It is meant to finally tie together a payment ecosystem that has long operated in silos, and carries real potential to catalyze the next major shift in how this country manages its money.
Government policies have already produced measurable results. According to Bangladesh Bank and the World Bank, more than 53% of the population now holds a bank account, while the number of registered mobile financial service accounts had reached 239.3 million by January 2026.
No frill accounts, which include low-income, student, and “street urchin” banking, now number 36,648,119, holding deposits of Tk90,101.37 million, according to Bangladesh Bank’s Financial Inclusion Report (April-June 2026).
However, the gap becomes clear if you compare these data with regional peers. Among Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, and Nepal, account ownership ranges from Sri Lanka’s 89% down to Pakistan’s 21%, with India at 78% and Nepal at 54%.
But these two extreme ends of the spectrum are not necessarily the best benchmarks. Sri Lanka has the highest per capita income and literacy rate among all nations in the region, while Nepal has an economy that relies on remittance and tourism rather than its domestic financial depth.
India and Pakistan offer the fairer comparison since they share similar income levels and developing economies with sizeable informal sectors and broadly similar macroeconomic pressures.
Among these two, India has shown how deliberately account ownership can be engineered through policy. In 2014, the country launched “Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana,” a national program built around a single objective: A formal bank account for every household.
The World Bank has attributed much of India’s sharp rise in account ownership between 2014 and 2017 directly to that program, which used official identification to draw previously unbanked citizens into the formal system.
This was followed by the UPI, India’s interoperable payments infrastructure, which brought together a landscape that had been as fragmented as Bangladesh’s remains today.
Private companies like ‘Paytm’ and ‘PhonePe’ took advantage of this and today, the results can be seen on the ground level where even street vendors all across Indian cities accept digital payment with no issues.
Bangladesh has built something close to UPI with its Bangla QR. With this, an everyday barrier to using formal financial channels has been removed. Additionally, through the National Payment Switch Bangladesh (NPSB), interoperability now runs in both directions; funds move from MFS to bank and bank to MFS with the same ease as MFS-to-MFS or bank-to-bank transfers.
The problem now is that the population is yet to fully comprehend how to plan, save, or invest their money. There has been rapid growth in MFS penetration in the country. But the majority of these users who know how to send or receive money, still do not understand basic concepts such as how micro-insurance functions or why a mutual fund or digital DPS might serve their long-term interest better than idle cash.
This gap leads us back to the lack of financial literacy among people in this country. According to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, we have a general literacy rate of 77.9%. However, our financial literacy stands at only 28% which means more than 70% of the population lacks the fundamental understanding of basic financial concepts.
There is no alternative to financial literacy if we want people to be able to manage their money well and make decisions suited to their circumstances. No platform or policy can make those choices on a person’s behalf.
It’s imperative to integrate financial literacy into the educational curriculum so that people grow up learning about financial concepts that will later help them manage their finances in life.
We also need more community-based campaigns and more programs on gender inclusive financial literacy. The government, financial institutions, and private sector must all come forward with easy and convenient financial tools so that it’s more accessible for people regardless of income, demographic, or gender.
The government has set its sights on a trillion-dollar economy by 2034, and it is hard to see how that can be achieved with a financial system that marginalizes half of its adult population.
An economy grows through the circulation of capital, and the capital circulates most effectively when people can save, borrow, invest, and transact through proper channels rather than informal channels.
A trillion-dollar economy needs savers and investors as much as it needs payers and, on that count, we still have a long way to go.
Syed Javed Noor is the AMD & Head of Business of IDLC Finance PLC.
