IFIC Bank And Exim Bank Ltd have closed all their MFS (Mobile Financial Services) accounts
The Export Import Bank of Bangladesh (Exim Bank) and IFIC Bank have closed their mobile banking services due to poor customer service, following an instruction from Bangladesh Bank.According to Bangladesh Bank data from January this year, Exim Bank Ltd and IFIC Bank Ltd have closed all their MFS (Mobile Financial Services) accounts.
Bangladesh Bank Executive Director and spokesman M Serajul Islam said they closed the two services because they could not perform as expected.
The services were called “Exim Cash” and “IFIC Mobile Banking”. After the closure of the two services, the number of MFS providers in the country now stands at 16. The central bank has repeatedly asked organizations that have taken licenses for offering MFS to raise the quality of the services.
Both Exim and IFIC had very small numbers of subscribers, and the closure of the services had almost no impact, said a senior Bangladesh Bank official.
According to the central bank’s latest data, the number of active MFS accounts in the country has decreased by 10.3% to 33.49 million in January from a month earlier. In January, the number of mobile banking agents stood at 898,996, as compared to 886,473 in the previous month.
Bangladesh Bank launched its mobile banking program in 2010. On March 31, 2011, Dutch-Bangla Bank introduced mobile banking services to the private sector. Soon after, bKash, as a partner company of Brac Bank, started its mobile banking service. bKash now holds the lion’s share of the mobile banking services market.
Exim Bank Corporate Affairs and Branding Division Vice President Sanjib Chatterjee told the Dhaka Tribune: “It is not only us, only two or three MFS are currently active. Bangladesh Bank’s information is not correct.”