Exclusive: GrameenPhone Plans For Money Transfer Business In Bangladesh

Dhaka, Bangladesh (AHN) - The GrameenPhone, the country's largest mobile phone company, has sought central bank permission to use its network to transfer money, in a move that will revolutionize the booming industry in Bangladesh, officials say in the capital, Dhaka on Thursday.

"The GrameenPhone (GP) has already submitted a proposal seeking permission to transfer money using its 'E-Wallet' mechanism," a senior official of the Bangladesh Bank (BB), the country's central bank, told AHN Media Corporation in Dhaka.

The company has given a presentation on the system at the central bank recently saying that the E-Wallet is the easiest and most secured system to transfer money all over the country, the official added.

The GP plans to initially use its 700 call centers out of 7000 spread across the country to transfer money from urban centers to rural areas.

Maximum $72.90 will be transferred through a single text message but a mobile phone subscriber will not be able to receive more than $291.63 (BDT 20,000) a month, the bank officials said, quoting the initial proposal of the GP.

The central bank of Bangladesh will send a team of experts, led by the general manager of currency management and payment systems Chowdhury Mahidul Haque, to the Philippines to see how the system works in the south-eastern nation.

"We will examine how the system operates in Philippines and how the central bank oversees the tech-based fund transfer system," another bank official said. "Our aim is to develop a mobile phone banking system in the country."

SMART, a Philippines telecommunications company, already has an established mobile financial service platform linking local bank accounts to mobile handsets, which has proved a huge success in the country.

The Philippines is the fourth-largest receiver of remittances in the world and last year it received an estimated $17 billion, according to the World Bank data.

The GP is a joint venture enterprise between Telenor, the largest telecommunications service provider in Norway, with 62 per cent shares and Grameen Telecom Corporation, a non-profit sister concern of the Grameen Bank, having 38 per cent shares.