Cashless shopping & Dining

Bangladesh remains an overwhelmingly cash-based society despite a host of measures by the central bank to facilitate digital payments and the country's fast internet adoption.

While the country's score in the Digital Money Index 2017, a 90-market perspective on digital money readiness developed by Citigroup and Imperial College London, improved 8 percent year-on-year, cashless transactions account for only 6 percent of the total transactions now.

A lack of awareness on the virtues of digital payment and poor digital infrastructure have been blamed for the low ratio.

It can all change with the government's active involvement in promoting digital payments and cashless transactions.

Syed Mohammad Kamal, country manager of MasterCard, cited the incentives for digital payments extended by the Indian government after its shock demonetisation as an example to follow.

The country's top e-commerce players often blame the banks for not promoting the virtues of digital payment enough.

Customers have trust issues too over the security of the digital payment systems.

But Mirajul Huq, chief executive officer of Bagdoom, a top e-commerce site, said incidences of card fraud in Bangladesh is very low even when compared to the Western world as verifications for transactions are very strong here.

Now, with the view to furthering the conversation on cashless transactions, private banks are preparing attractive offers on the use of plastic cards during Ramadan, Bangladesh's peak shopping season.