State Minister for Finance and Planning MA Mannan on Sunday said the government is ready to provide essential support to the Mobile Financial Service (MFS) providers to reach out maximum population.
He said this at a round table discussion on 'Mobile Financial Service: the Right Delivery Process', organised by Dhaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DCCI) at its office in the capital's Motijheel area.
The State Minister said the government will come forward with necessary policies if the stakeholders, banks, mobile phone operators and third party service providers take risks to expand their existing market.
He also said the Bangladesh Bank (BB) has made regulations for MFS which will encourage the service providers as well as bring transparency to the mobile transaction system.
Speaking at the programme, DCCI President Hossain Khaled said 23 per cent of total mobile phone users availed MFS as registered customer as of June 2015 as against only 0.50 per cent in 2012.
He said MFS has enormously contributed to rural-urban fund flow as efforts are being made to popularise mobile money as a viable alternative to physical and plastic money.
Most of the MFS providers are usually limited to only 'money transfer', he said adding to achieve the inclusive financial inclusion and empowering individuals money transfer service model should be transformed into banking services.
DCCI also placed some recommendations to enhance the utility of MFS.
The recommendations include encouraging transfers where both senders and receivers (P2P), or at least the receivers (partial OTC- Over the Counter) are registered MFS users. This can be done through imposing strict penalties on OTC transfers.
Currently, 20 banks in the country have been providing mobile financial service which is also known as mobile banking with 29.21 million registered customers through 0.5 million agents.    ?UNB