Bangladesh Bank has recently launched an investigation into Mobicash, a mobile financial service of Grameenphone, to find out if the service is violating the banking rules. BB officials said the central bank on Tuesday asked five banks, including Islami Bank Bangladesh and Dutch-Bangla Bank, which have agreement with GP for Mobicash service, to submit the details of the agreement.
‘We will examine the agreements to see whether or not the banks are violating any rules,’ BB executive director Dasgupta Ashim Kumar told New Age.
Kumar said a key factor of the investigation would be how Mobicash was preserving its money.
‘We will take punitive measures against the banks if they are found violating regulation in the Mobicash service,’ he said.
BB officials said a telecom operator could not appoint agents for any banking service.
Besides, the BB will scrutinise whether Mobicash merges the deposited money in between mobile financial services and the utility fund of the clients, Kumar said.
‘The agents of Mobicash have recently started to open accounts of mobile financial services on behalf of the banks which made controversial situation in the banking sector,’ another BB official told New Age.
He said for agent banking, the BB had a separate guideline and if any entity wanted to run banking through agents, then it would have to be abided by the agent banking guideline.
According to the central bank approval, Mobicash can operate three types of services — ticket purchasing for cricket match, ticket buying for train and payment of utility bills on behalf of the clients.
The central bank earlier faced huge criticism from various corners about the mobile financial services as it approved bKash, a subsidiary company of BRAC Bank, to operate mobile banking.
A central bank investigation report, however, suggested that a subsidiary company of a bank was not able to operate banking like MFS in accordance with the bank company act.
But, the central bank high-ups finally extended its stance to bKash mysteriously overlooking its investigation report.
Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission officials said the GP did not take any approval from telecom regulator for Mobicash service.
‘The GP took service approval for ticketing and utility bill pay service separately. Later, it launched the services under the name of Mobicash,’ a BTRC official told New Age.
Asked about the issue, a senior GP official said Mobicash service was being operated completely maintaining the rules and regulations.
‘The Mobicash agents are linked up with the partner banks under the agreement. And the agreement was approved by the BB and the BTRC,’ he told New Age on Tuesday.
-With New Age input
