Money Transfer Charge Too High: Mobile Operators

Mobile phone operators yesterday alleged that charge per transaction for mobile money transfer service in Bangladesh was much higher than that in neighbouring countries and that the operators were not getting due revenue.

In India, the transfer charge is 0.65 percent of the amount being moved while the market leader in Bangladesh was exacting 1.85 percent, they said.

Holding 90 percent of the market share, bKash shares 7 percent of this 1.85 percent transfer charge with mobile operators under the contract for availing SMS and unstructured supplementary service data (USSD) services.

On an average, 10 crore SMS and 13 crore USSD sessions (one transfer meaning one session) are generated every day for the money transfer service providers, said the operators.

The transfer service providers give out some of these to customers for free and mobile operators say they are in the dark about the volume.

Since this does not generate revenue, the operators say they lose out under the contract's “revenue sharing clause”.

“We found no transparency here and we want transparency in place,” said Mahmud Hossain, chief corporate affairs officer of Grameenphone.

Addressing a discussion organised by the Association of Mobile Telecom Operators of Bangladesh (AMTOB) at its office, he said “revenue sharing” called for taking part in running the business, something they were not doing.

So mobile operators should be paid on use of every SMS and USSD session, not a percentage of only those that generate revenue, he said.

The mobile operators recently sent a proposal to the telecom regulator to fix a moderate rate. Earlier they had proposed Tk 1.50 for use of every USSD session.

The contract was a temporary arrangement of using USSD when the money transfer service was launched but this arrangement cannot last for an indefinite period, unlimited time, said senior executives of different mobile operators.

Besides, the SMS and USSD session creates congestion in the network during peak hours and causes call drops and a decline in service quality, they said.

TIM Nurul Kabir, secretary general of AMTOB, said they wanted a fair share of the revenue coming from the use of their networks.

“We asked the telecom regulator to fix a rate taking into consideration what was happening in neighbouring counties,” he said.

Contacted by The Daily Star, bKash Chief Executive Officer Kamal Quadir said they maintained full transparency when it came to what they charged per transfer and the revenue sharing.

Anyone with questions can contact the banking regulator, he said.

He also disapproved of the comparison with those in India. “The Indian model and our model is not the same. So that should not be comparable,” he said.

After paying the mobile operators, bKash provides 77 percent of the revenue generated per transaction to its agents and keeps the remaining 16 percent.

Five years back following its launching, the figures were 85 percent and 8 percent respectively.

The number of active mobile money transfer accounts were 5.7 crore in August when Tk 32,182.96 crore was moved, says a monthly report of Bangladesh Bank.

Referring to another report, mobile operators said of bKash transfers, 62.87 percent occurred through agents, 34.31 percent from person to person, 2.1 percent for mobile top-ups and 0.72 percent for merchant transactions.

News Source : The Daily Star
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