E-commerce growth drops sharply in June
Growth of e-commerce transactions dropped to 7% in June from 29% in May as the sector is going through many challenges, according to the central bank's data.
However, the number of transactions increased to 24,81,942 in contrast to 24,76,194 in May.
ATM transactions also dropped in June, but the point-of-sale (POS) transactions rose to 85 crore over the previous month, the latest data say.
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According to the Bangladesh Bank's e-Banking and e-Commerce Statistics Unit, the total transactions through ATM, POS, customer relationship management (CRM) and e-commerce decreased by 557 crore to 23,988 crore from 24,545 crore in May.
Raising an alarm about high transaction value through unregulated e-commerce sites, the central bank recently sent a report to the commerce ministry, saying there were no assets against advance payments collected from the consumers.
A few renowned e-commerce firms in the country are accumulating huge amounts of money by luring online shoppers with high discounts, which has made the Bangladesh Bank worried.
In this new business model, online shops collect money from customers in advance for one or two months. In some cases, these stores take more time to deliver products. And, often they inform customers that the products they ordered have been exhausted and so deliveries cannot be made.
Allegations run rife that customers do not even receive refunds after waiting for months in case of sellers' failure to deliver products.
