Bangladesh Bank prioritised online payment service to accelerate e-commerce, Deputy Governor Nazneen Sultana said yesterday.

“Once people become habituated with IT [information technology] the success of e-commerce is just a matter of time,” she said.

But the financial institutions will have to ensure payment security and products will have to be delivered as promised, she added. Sultana's comments came at a roundtable on the potential and challenges of e-commerce as a business driver, held at Ruposhi Bangla Hotel in Dhaka.

The event, organised by Bangladesh Bank and Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services (BASIS), was part of an e-commerce week that started on Saturday.

In India, 58 percent of the electronic transaction takes place for air and train ticket purchase, said Uttam Nayak, VISA's country manager for India and South Asia.

To popularise the e-commerce service in Bangladesh, he suggested introducing prepaid cash card service to attract the low-income people.

He also suggested that all the financial institutions are put on the same electronic payment platform so that individual banks need not develop their own.

Shameem Ahsan, senior vice-president of BASIS, said online payment is more secured than card transactions at shops as the customers pay directly to the banks and not the online portal.

Firoz Patel, executive vice-president of Payza, the international online payment platform that recently started operations in Bangladesh, said his company wants to see rapid growth in e-commerce in Bangladesh.

Citing the tremendous growth of the readymade garment industry formed 20 years ago, Sayeeful Islam, managing director of SSLCOMMERZ, said e-commerce, if started now, can scale similar heights.

The participants -- ranging from foreign and local IT experts to bankers, banking regulators and businesspeople -- called for introduction of all kinds of debit and credit cards and mobile payment facility for ease of online shopping.