Bangladesh Electronic Funds Transfer Network (BEFTN) will start function from February 20 next year.

The Bangladesh Bank in a recent circular announced the date of starting the BEFTN activities and asked all participating commercial banks for taking necessary preparation enabling them to conduct transactions through the network.

With the introduction of BEFTN, the fully automated cheque clearing process would be completed in the country. Earlier on October 7 this year, the activities of the Bangladesh Automated Cheque Processing System (BACPS) started at the Dhaka clearing zone.

The activities of this modern high value national payment system have now been expanded at all branches of the central bank across the country.

All the branches of the banks that are members of Dhaka Clearing House are members of the regular value clearing, but the high value service is only activated at few branches of commercial branches at Motijheel and Dilkusha.

This high-value service will be extended to all branches in the city from January 5, next year, according to the Bangladesh Bank circular.

The automated clearing house activities will start in Sylhet on January 20, and in Chittagong on February 3 next year.

The central bank has asked all branches of member banks to send all instruments on clearing to BACPS Data Centre in Dhaka. The net-settlement would be completed through integrating all accounts of participating banks preserved at the central bank.

Bangladesh Bank in partnership with the UK Depart-ment for International Develop-ment (DFID) embarked on a project to modernise Bang-ladesh’s national payments system.

All commercial banks who are members of the Dhaka Clearing House will be required to submit their list of selected branches and to finalise their "point of transaction" for submission of their outward cheque images and data to BACPS and be prepared to handle cheque image and data as part of their inward clearing operations.

Source: Daily-Sun, Bangladesh/20th Dec 2010