UNB, Dhaka
Three people are jumping on the bandwagon of digital transactions every second by opening mobile banking accounts at Nagad, the digital financial service of the government of Bangladesh.
On March 7, about 2.87 lakh people opened accounts with Nagad. Of them, 95 per cent opened the accounts by dialling *167# on their mobile phones. The rest clients used the app to open the accounts. About 2.51 lakh accounts were opened on March 6. This trend has continued in recent times with the opening of Nagad accounts, said a press release.
Nagad has made the account-opening so easy that any mobile phone subscriber can do this just by dialling *167# on their mobile phones and set the personal identification number (PIN). The hassle-free account-opening system has made financial inclusion free of inequality.
Such a faster pace of account-opening has never happened in Bangladesh. Nagad is opening the accounts by verifying information about the prospective clients under a memorandum of understanding with all mobile phone operators and in line with the government approval.
As mobile phone operators have the information of a national identification (NID) number of a subscriber, whenever a prospective user dials *167# to express his or her interest to open the MFS account, their information is instantly verified against the NID database and the process to open the account is completed. The innovation of Nagad has already caught the attention of many countries.
Thanks to the easy account opening process and a number of recent campaigns, people are rushing to join the network of Nagad. The download of Nagad app has gone up to such a level that it is in the top chart of the Google Play Store among the apps from Bangladesh.
The market share of Nagad is 30 percent in terms of clients. Nagad is working to raise it to 50 percent by this year.
There was a time when people had to spend a considerable amount of time and money to open an MFS account. They had to wait for days and even for weeks. In order to bring about a change to the situation, Nagad introduced the first digital KYC (know your customer) in the country. Later, Nagad took the step to open MFS accounts in just a minute through the Porichoy app of the government of Bangladesh. Now, a mobile phone subscriber can easily become an MFS account-holder by dialling *167# and set the PIN. Nagad has already won a number of awards from several international agencies because of the innovation in the financial industry.
Nagad has introduced an attractive mobile recharge offer. A user can get Tk 20 in bonus if they recharge Tk 20 on their phones from Nagad wallet. Besides, the government’s mobile financial service has created opportunities for the customers to avail the country’s lowest cash-out charge, free send-money and bill payment facilities, the highest interest rate on deposits, and hassle-free payment offers.
