Only 3% Internet users are Internet banking customers

Only three out of every 100 Internet users in the country have been using Internet banking services, showed an analysis of data supplied by the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission and the Bangladesh Bank.

An analysis of the last three years' data reveals that the number of Internet banking customers in the country has been increasing rapidly, but it is insignificant compared to the total number of Internet users.

The percentage of Internet banking customers among the total Internet users was 2.23% in February 2019, 2.61% in February 2020, and 2.99% in February 2021.

According to the Bangladesh Bank, the number of Internet banking customers in February this year was 33.82 lakh, which was 7.77 lakh more than that in February last year.

In February 2020, the number of Internet banking customers increased by 5.56 lakh compared to February 2019 and reached 26.05 lakh.

This shows that during the last year, the number of Internet banking customers has increased a lot compared to the previous year (2019).

However, Jamuna Bank Managing Director Mirza Elias Uddin Ahmed said the number of Internet banking customers should be two-three crore, considering the total number of Internet users in Bangladesh.

He thinks that there is no alternative to increasing the number of Internet banking customers if we want to make the informal banking services more popular than formal banking.

Mosharraf Hossain, deputy managing director and head of Development Wing of Islami Bank Bangladesh Limited, told The Business Standard, "The majority of Internet users in the country are young. On the other hand, most of the bank customers are middle-aged persons. They use the Internet less than the youths do and they often find the Internet banking services complicated. Besides, a part of the bank customers is not so educated."

"Due to these reasons, the number of customers taking the Internet banking services is negligible compared to the total Internet users. However, due to the Covid-19 crisis, the number of Internet banking customers has increased a lot, and the trend will continue in the future," said Mosharraf Hossain.

Noting that there will be no alternative to banking services using information technology in the future, the deputy managing director of Islami Bank said banks are continuing their efforts to make Internet banking more popular.

AYM Mostafa, chief technology officer of Prime Bank, told TBS, "Most people use the Internet through mobile phones, banks need to focus on increasing mobile-based Internet banking services. Besides, if we can bring new products for the youth, the number of young customers of the banks will increase."

He also said the banks have been trying to increase Internet banking or digital banking services, but some of them are not able to move forward as launching these services require high investment.

Md Zafrul Hasan, head of Digital Financial Services of City Bank, told TBS, "Internet banking customers are usually regular Internet users. On the other hand, if someone uses a certain amount of Internet data, he is considered an Internet user, although he is not a regular user. Due to this, the total number of Internet users seems much higher."

Currently, a customer can transfer up to Tk5 lakh by maximum 10 transactions in a day through Internet banking services. The customer cannot send more than Tk1 lakh in a transaction.

An organisation can send up to Tk10 lakh from one bank to another in a day. In this case, the maximum limit per transaction is Tk2 lakh, and they can do maximum 20 transactions in one day.