Dhaka, Dec 20: BRAC Bank Ltd. (BBL) on Sunday launched Bangladesh's first e-commerce banking platform in alliance with Visa, thereby opening an opportunity for Bangladeshi citizens to use Visa cards for shopping online. Any Bangladeshi with internet access now can shop online with a Visa card or any card issued by BRAC Bank. Attending as the chief guest, Dr. Atiur Rahman, Governor of Bangladesh Bank, inaugurated the country’s first e-commerce banking system at a city hotel on Sunday.

Md. A. (Rumee) Ali, Chairman of BBL, Syed Mahbubur Rahman, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of BBL and Uttam Nayak, Group Country Manager (India and South Asia) of Visa were present along with senior officials, leading merchants and clients.

“The central bank has continuously been facilitating bringing banking to the doorsteps of the general mass. This online shopping is another milestone in that journey. I am happy to inaugurate this service brought first time in Bangladesh and that too by a Bangladeshi bank,” the Banglaesh Bank Governor said.

Md. A. (Rumee) Ali, said, “I think this will pave the way for many companies to start doing business online. This hopefully will be the start of online business revolution for Bangladeshi companies enabling them to keep up with the rest of the world and innovate how they interact with their customers.”

Uttam Nayak in his speech said that e-commerce would not only reduce cost of transaction but also save couple of hours rather than shopping physically.

E-commerce facilitates remote payments which are better than face-to-face payments, he said and adding it will give an opportunity to include more people in banking transaction, one’s who buying goods and other’s who selling goods. Firoz Ahmed Khan, Head of Retail Banking, while demonstrating the new service features at the launching ceremony said that the new shopping platform would work just any other developed online stores work.

Consumers can browse and choose their products on either the online super-stores or individual shops and then they can add the products to their cards through checking out finally, they simply need to put their details from BBL or Visa card. Online ticket booking with ones credit card and general retail purchases online have been something many credit card holders have been waiting to be able to do for years while many working Bangladeshis facing problems as the shops are normally closed at 8 pm., he said.

BRAC Bank online shopping is open for 24 hours making it possible for retail products, companies and stores to keep earning long after shopping hours are over, he added.

Source:The Independent