Bangladesh Bank has urged the Election Commission to allow banks to access into its NID (National Identity) server so they could increase mobile banking accounts or wallets and help deepen the financial inclusion.

“Unlike other countries, it is not common in Bangladeshi to carry NID, which is hampering adoption of wallet,” Governor Atiur Rahman told a function in Dhaka yesterday.

“There is, therefore, a need for awareness campaign of carrying NID and allowing access to NID by mobile bankers.”

He was addressing a function to release a survey report on “Mobile Financial Services (MFS): Consumer Insights” at a city hotel.

pi Strategy Consulting and Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) of World Bank  jointly launched the survey findings at the function.

National Board of Revenue also uses the EC NID server in the process of registering the TINs.

According to the report, only 3% MFS customers transacted money using their own accounts, 52% through agents, 35% through either sender or receiver accounts and 10% through courier services.

The governor said it is natural that survey at agent points would be dominated by non-account holder customers. “Due to low transaction limit, some find it convenient to send money through agents.”

There is a general perception that opening an account is a cumbersome process-which indirectly promotes using agents.

The current form of registration, which doesn’t allow people to instantly open an account, significantly slows the process of financial inclusion – as people want to open accounts on the spot and transfer funds instantly.

However, self-wallet-use is increasing as many elements (i.e. airtime, loan repayment, merchant payment, school fee payment) are coming in the ecosystem and, time to time, one should study how the adaptation is increasing.

Atiur said most of the cash-ins are happening in major metro cities while cash-outs are spreading to the rural areas making significant contribution in terms of financial inclusion and there by inclusive growth.

“In cash-in markets, customers don’t feel the need to open an account, however, in the cash-out markets, there is a higher need to register and open an account.”

He said there are big differences in regulatory perspective -ours is bank-led model while others in the globe may not be so.

“It is a light-touch regulated. Normally central bank is heavy handed but I had to change mindset to understand that many are not educated.”

Pial Islam, managing partner of the consulting firm, presented the survey and said the research is expected to assist industry players as well as the regulator to gain important insights about MFS end-users.

According to the survey nearly 48% of the MFS users reside in urban areas while 32% in rural and 20% in semi urban areas. A big gender gap among the users, only 18% of them are female and the average monthly income of the MFS users is Tk8007, which is higher than the national average income, and nearly three times higher than the poverty line average income.

More than four-fifths of the users transfer funds between the members of same economic households. The study reports that those who are using mobile banking, tend to conduct more frequent transactions of lower monetary value compared to their own funds transfer patterns in the past.

A significant number of people have been opening wallets, especially over the last few months. Some 25% of those surveyed are wallet owners.

Among the MFS users, noticeable differences were observed in the study between wallet owners and those who don’t have wallets.

Early adopters of wallet are typically younger, better educated, earn more and have better English proficiency than non-wallet MFS users.

Islam said: “This raises some important questions about impact of MFS towards financial inclusion. Are the unbanked, less educated and poorer segments of our population being served through MFS in a significant way yet?”

By now, 28 banks have MFS permission and 19 are in active operation that includes BRAC Bank’s dedicated MFS, bKash. Key players in MFS are bKash, DBBL Mobile Money and M-Cash of IBBL with13.2mn registered customers with about 2 lakh agents nationwide generating (on average) more than 1.0 million transactions amounting more than Tk2.21b per day.

News:Dhaka Tribune/08-Feb-2014