The central bank launched an automated clearing house at its office in Barisal on Sunday for faster settlement of transactions and payment systems as part of its move to digitalise the country’s banking system.

Twenty six branches of commercial and scheduled banks in Barisal came under online system of Bangladesh Automated Clearing House (BACH) at Bangladesh Bank (BB).

The system will significantly reduce settlement time from three days to only two hours.

“We moved one step ahead of many other countries by introducing this modern technology-based payment and transaction system,” BB deputy Governor Murshid Kuli Khan said while inaugurating the clearing house as chief guest at the central bank’s Barisal branch office.

Golam Mostafa, general manager Barisal BB presided over the progamme.

Dasgupta Asim Kumar, executive director of BB, Mohammad Akhlasuddin, deputy director of BB, Majibur Rahman, GM of Kirishi Bank, Mominul Huq, VP of NBL, Biswadev Manadal, zonal head of Janata Bank, and other high officials of public and private commercial, schedule and specialised banks were present.

The Department for International Development (DFID) of United Kingdom funded $8.5 million to implement the Bangladesh Automated Clearing House (BACH).

The deputy governor of BB stressed on ‘green banking’ for the coastal and southern region of the country.

He said the main benefit of the new BACH system will go to the business firms and to the remittance earners as they will get their payments within a day instead of waiting for a number of days. This will facilitate the online banking as well.

BACH system is based on latest state-of-the art technology. It’s a most secured system,’ he said.

The BB deputy governor also said the existing clearing system would also continue alongside the new one.

He said the new automated system will contribute one per cent to the GDP through expediting the business transactions.

Under the new automated system, banks will get rid of sending cheques physically to the clearing house at the central bank for fund transfers. Now, the banks can do the job online from their own offices using machine readable cheques and the funds will be transferred electronically.

However, the banks can also drop their cheques at the BACH at Bangladesh Bank where the machine can take image and data of 300 cheques per minute.

The new magnetic ink character recognition encoded cheques have already been introduced by different banks to integrate with the new system, sources said. The encoded cheques will reduce the cheque clearance time to only two hours from the two days required so long, the source added.

News: Daily Sun/ Bangladesh/ May-08-2011