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Mobile Financial Service 101: Major Trends In MFS In Bangladesh

Bangladesh has registered significant growth in adoption of Mobile Banking. This sector posted an average 60%+ growth in all major metric, recent data released by Bangladesh Bank shows.

In Terms of total and active mobile banking users, this sector has grown 77% and 83% respectively in YoY basis. As of December 2016, there were 41.08 million registered and 15.87 million active mobile banking user against 31.85 million (total user) and 13.22 million (active user) of December 2015.

Metrics / YearDec. 2015Dec. 2016Growth
Total Registered Users (in million)31.8541.0877.52
Total Active Users (in million)13.2215.8783.27
Total Agents (in million)0.560.7179.04

This increase has also impacted overall volume of transaction and amount transacted. There is a 79% increase in total number of transactions and 67% more money was transacted on YoY basis.

mobile financial service in Bangladesh
Bangladesh MFS Scenario: 2015 vs 2016

More user and increased money transfer has also attracted new agents. There were 0.71 million agents in 2016 across the country against 0.56 million agents in 2015, registering a growth of 79% on YoY basis.

Bangladesh MFS Scenario: 2015 vs. 2016
Bangladesh MFS Scenario: 2015 vs. 2016

Bangladesh has a mobile user base of 120.73 million as of October 2016 against which registered Mobile Banking user is 41.08 million (December 2016), meaning there is a huge scope of bringing more user under the net.

Besides, 60% of existing MFS users are inactive, which gives a strong case for MFS providers to launch reactivation campaign as reactivating existing customer costs less than bringing in new customer.

The growth registered by the sector is significant, but not phenomenal. There is an agreement among the sector experts that this sector needs innovative products that can make customer's’ life easier and add more value. Adoption of digital channels like smartphone application, web interface and enabling integration with numerous services like bill payment can contribute to further growth in users and usage of the service.

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Nezam Uddin is a Co-founder at Future Startup and looks after finance.

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