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Since Covid-19 emerged, mobile financial service (MFS) providers have witnessed a tremendous surge in terms of number of customers.
The MFS service providers added around 18.0 million new customers in 11 months from March 2020 to January 2021, taking the number of registered clients to 100.6 million, reports BSS.
The central bank data show that the transaction through mobile phones was around Taka 5.35 trillion during the 11 months from March 2020 to January 2021 which was Taka 4.10 trillion during the previous 11 months from March 2019 to January 2020.
The country’s MFS operators are now providing different services, including sending money, cash-in, cash-out, salary disbursement, donation for the poor, stipend disbursement, remittance, payments for different government services, toll payment, credit card bill payment and insurance premiums.
Experts on the MFS observed that the peoples’ tendency towards the digital platform during the Covid period, paperless banking, simplification of the MFS services, upgrade of digital infrastructure of commercial banks and allowing utility service payments are the main factors for the growth of the MFS in Bangladesh.
They mentioned that the countrywide lockdown has become beneficial to digital banking as people became familiar with the online and mobile service payment systems, resulting in the huge growth.