Committee formed to formulate guidelines
Bangladesh Bank has taken initiative to reduce the transaction fee for mobile financial service as the clients are now giving their respective banks charges between Tk 18 and Tk 20 for a single transaction amounting to Tk 1,000 through the service.
The central bank has already formed a technical committee to formulate guidelines regarding a unified fee for transaction through the MFS, a BB official told New Age on Monday.
He said that the BB might recommend the technical committee to set the fee between Tk 12 and Tk 15 for a single transaction amounting to Tk 1,000 through the mobile banking service.
Representatives from Association of Mobile Telecom Operators of Bangladesh, Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission and Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications have been included in the technical committee.
BB executive director Dasgupta Asim Kumar is the chairman of the committee.
The committee held a meeting on Sunday at the central bank’s headquarters and it will again meet next Sunday, the BB official said.
Due to an absence of guidelines for a unified MFS transaction fee, the country’s banking sector is now facing an indiscipline situation in this area that discourages the banks which has recently received no-objection certificates from the central bank to operate the MFS, he said.
Of Tk 18 or Tk 20 for a transaction amounting to Tk 1,000 through the MFS, the banks are usually now paying 80 per cent of the fee to their agents of the MFS, 13 per cent to telecom operators for charge of short message service, the BB official said.
Banks receive only seven per cent to eight per cent from the transaction charge at the client level, he said.
He said that two to three banks had established a monopoly on the MFS resulting that they can avail lower charge.
The other banks, which have recently got licences for MFS, feel discouraged to expand their mobile banking business due to the lower charge.
Besides, the two to three banks, which control the major share of the MFS market, pay different types of charge to their agents and telecom operators.
Most of the banks earlier alleged that the telecom operators sought higher charges from them for SMS than what they charged the two to three banks.
Besides, new agents did not show interest to attach with their (other banks’) MFS service due to lower charge than what they get from the two to three banks.
For this reason, the financial transaction through the MFS does not expand in accordance with the volume of the domestic market.
The technical committee will set a unified charge for every bank, agents and the telecom operators, the official said.
The BB will recommend the technical committee to reduce the charges for agents and the telecom operators which will ultimately reduce the overall transaction fee through the MFS.
The BB official hoped that the proposed guidelines on the unified transaction fee through the MFS would help the banks to expand their business.
Clients will also get respite from the higher transaction charges, he added.
-With New Age input
