Bangladesh will enter a full-fledged mobile banking network within the next three months, and the shift will be implemented within a bank-led model, the central bank governor said yesterday.

"The upcoming mobile banking has to be led by the banks," Atiur Rahman said at a discussion at the National Press Club in Dhaka.

The model will ensure proper regulatory monitoring and transparency in the related transaction processes and help reach banking services to the grassroots, he said.

The discussion on 'financial inclusion and impact of ICT' was organised by NeoSTAR Alliance, an association of the students of American International University-Bangladesh.

"Already we have given licences to a number of banks towards that goal and a few banks have started their operations," the governor said.

He called upon the telecom operators to give the banks access to their USSD (unstructured supplementary service data) networks soon so both the sectors can communicate with each other.

"The telecom operators will be encouraged to form partnership with the banks under the mobile banking system but they themselves will not be the bankers," he added.

Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee for the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications Hasanul Haq Inu stressed reducing the bandwidth price to less than Tk 10,000 to easily bring the rural people under connectivity.

He also emphasised collaboration between banks, telecom companies, regulators and content developers to build a strong domestic ICT base.

President of the Association of Mobile Telecom Operators of Bangladesh Zakiul Islam proposed a 'hybrid model' for the upcoming mobile banking where 'both banks and mobile operators will have an equal role'.

Source: The Daily Star