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REVENUE SHARING BETWEEN BANKS AND TELCOS

Joy resolves tussle in mobile financial service

Star Business Report
Sajeeb Wazed Joy, Prime Minister's ICT affairs adviser, yesterday in a meeting has resolved a longstanding tussle between the mobile financial service providers and mobile operators.
The MFS providers use the mobile operator's Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD), which allows banking services from one's basic feature phone without the need for internet connection, to relay their service.
In return, the MFS providers share 7 percent of their earnings with the mobile operators, much to the dissatisfaction of the latter.
But now, the MFS providers will have to pay the carriers according to
usage. For each 90-second session He 0.85 will be charged provided a successful transaction had taken place.
Customers will get two text messages, the cost for which will be bundled within theTk 0.85 charge.
For other non-transactional services such as checking balance, the MFS providers will have to pay Tk 0.40, which they did not previously.
At present, the MFS providers charge the customers 1.8 percent of the amount as transaction fee.
For instance, if a customer made a transaction for Tk 10,000, his/her charge would be He 180. Of the He 180, the MFS providers forward He 25.71 to the mobile operators.
“As we are not changing the customers' charge right now there may
not be any reaction from them," said Abul Kashem Md. Shirin, managing director and chief executive officer of Dutch-Bangla Bank, the parent company of the second largest MFS provider'Rocket'.
The changes might increase their cost of delivering the sendee but they will absorb it and later report to the government to review it again.
Earlier, both the market leading MFS operators bKash and Rocket claimed that the development might ward off the end users.
But yesterday, after the meeting they said they will observe the changes and after one or two months they will sit to find out the impact. However, mobile operators said there was a lack of clarity in the revenue-sharing model. Now, there will be transparency and definitely it will not increase end users costs.
"This is a business to business price and no way to impact customers' charges. Rather they will get benefit when this change is implemented," said TIM Nurul Kabir, secretary general of the Association of Mobile Telecom Operators of Bangladesh.
Kabir said USSD is a service from the operators like voice calls, SMS and internet seivices and without regulation they could not continue to provide it as demand is increasing. 'Plus, it creates pressure on the mobile operators' network."
MFS started in Bangladesh in 2011. At that time, the USSD price was not fixed and an ad hoc basis revenue sharing model was established. Last December, some mobile operators even said they could not serve the MFS operators by disrupting their own business and reduced service in peak hours.
Top officials from mobile operators, mobile financial seivices providers and banking and telecom regulator, telecom minister were present in the meeting at the prime minister's official residence.