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BANKING

Phone banking from home or car

Sajjadur Rahman
Abdul Khalcque, 60, a wholesaler in die old Dhaka's Chawkbazar area, now feels more safe and comfortable to bank. Because it has become so easy that he does not even need to take the trouble to remain present at his bank in person to have an access to banking.
"You just press some buttons on your cell phone and know the balance of your account or ask for some specific services you need," die businessman said gaily.
Looking back to the past, Khaleque said, "Just two years back, it was worrisome for me to send any member of my staff to my bank to deposit the daily business earnings with it. At that time, any delay in his return from the bank worried me... is anything wrong? Did he deposit the money or not."
Those days are gone. Now he is happy with the new banking system.
And such modern services of die banks in the country are increasingly alluring the customers. A private bank slogan says: "Enjoy the convenience of banking anytime, anywhere simply by pressing a few buttons on your phone.”
Phone banking is a service provided by a financial institution, which allows its customers to perform transactions over telephone. Under this system, there is an automated answering with phone keypad response or voice recognition capability. To guarantee security, customers must first authenticate through a numeric or verbal password or
through security questions asked by a live representative.
Any customer can avail of the services like balance enquiry, fund transfer, chequebooks, statements and foreign currency exchange rate from his or her home, office or car.
This easy banking was first introduced by the Standard Chartered Bank in Bangladesh 5 years back. Later, the BRAC Bank came up with such a banking facility for its customers. It will complete two years of operation of this service in September
next. At present, the BRAC Bank gets on an average 7000 calls a day from their customers who ask for phone banking service.
The idea of phone banking was adopted by
most of the developed and developing countries in the mid- 90s. However, Asians, including China and India, came up late with this customer-friendly idea. It was 2000 they started offering their bank customers such a new facility.
In Bangladesh, not many a bank
picked up the idea, except StanChart and BRAC.
“The main feature of the service is convenience and 24-hours risk-free banking,” Abedur Rahman Sikder, head of marketing and corporate affairs of BRAC Bank Limited, said, pointing to the fact that such banking has a huge potentiality as the country's economy has been growing at over 5 percent since mid 1990s.
He said the number of customers is also growing rapidly.
The BRAC Bank official further said paying utility bills such as electricity, telephone or gas, and transferring and receiving money from anywhere will also shortly be brought under the purview of phone banking.
"Customers will be able to shop and even buy a movie ticket through this banJdng in a near future," Sikder said.
A recent report by Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP), a global micro finance body, predicts that with the right market conditions, mobile banking could reach large numbers of poor people who are outside the formal financial system.
"Market forces are driving down costs. In the Philippines, we see that a transaction on a cell phone or at an ATM costs one fifth that of a traditional visit to a bank branch," said Gautam Ivatury, manager of CGAP's Technology Programme and coauthor of the report. "Yet globally, we estimate that less than one in ten mobile phone banking customers are poor, new to banking, or doing anything more than payments and transfers."
Could mobile banking reach a large number of poor people who are outside the formal financial system in Bangladesh?
“Poor customers may get easy access to the financial services,” said Shahjahan Bhuiyan, managing director of Prime Bank Limited. “It is possible to render services to the poor customers by simple phone banking," Bhuiyan asserted.
sajjad@thedailystar.net