Half of banks yet to adopt Bangla QR

Just over half of banks have yet to start adopting Bangla QR in spite of instructions passed by Bangladesh Bank on boosting cashless transactions across the country by this year. 

It was in January that the central bank launched Bangla QR, a uniform digital payment system aimed to significantly cut cash-based retail transactions.

A QR code is a barcode that stores information as a series of pixels in a square grid and can easily be read by smartphones.

The uniform digital payment method, Bangla QR, enables paying bills for goods and services through mobile banking applications, mobile financial service and payment service providers.

The uniform digital payment method, Bangla QR, enables paying bills for goods and services through mobile banking applications, mobile financial service and payment service providers.

It is cost-effective, secured, and card-less and is expected to help promote digital transactions to a large extent in an economy that relies almost entirely on paper currencies and notes to function.

Afterwards, 28 banks and five mobile financial services providers adopted Bangla QR code-based transactions, said a central bank document.

The remaining 33 are yet to follow suit.

Most do not have apps to offer services digitally, said a senior official of the central bank.

Against this backdrop, Bangladesh Bank held a meeting with head of card, alternative delivery channel and IT departments of those banks at the banking regulator's headquarters yesterday.

Md Sharafat Ullah Khan, the BB's payment system department director, presided over the meeting.

The central bank instructed the banks to fast adopt Bangla QR-based transactions as the regulator had set December as the deadline to boost digital transactions, said the commercial bank officials who attended the meeting.

They said the BB also asked to phase out cards that were not interoperable.

On launching Bangla QR, the BB had initiated a campaign to popularise the QR code in Dhaka city and four other districts -- Gazipur, Gopalganj, Natore and Rangpur.

The BB officials said the volume of transactions through Bangla QR was not satisfactory, which was why the BB had asked those banks to speed up their activities.

The central bank has set a goal to have at least 75 percent of retail transactions settled through digital technologies by 2027 to create a cashless society.