The Country to Beat in Mobile Payments is…Bangladesh?
While most of us out there likely don’t think about Bangladesh as first in anything related to technology, let alone mobile payments, there are some who indeed believe that the case.
The country has made some noteworthy advancements recently, and the current Policy Advisor to the Prime Minister, Anir Chowdhury, recently stepped up the rhetoric to say that Bangladesh is the hand to beat in mobile payments.
Admittedly, Chowdhury is coming off a serious high; recently, we saw it here that Bangladesh was working on bringing out a complete, nationwide mobile payments system that could be readily accessed by just about anyone in the country. That’s a great step forward, especially for a country that’s mostly rural and does large amounts of its business in cash.
However, reports note, that’s just where Bangladesh is starting, not ending. There’s work being done on several different projects in Bangladesh, starting with being able to pay taxes by text message, being able to send and receive money without ever setting foot in a bank, even to set up an account in the first place, and even allow parts of your body to verify your identity.
What’s more, Bangladesh even has plans to digitize many of its services, and in turn many of these will become privatized in scope. Given that Chowdhury previously served stints with tech companies and Fortune 500 firms, it’s not surprising he’d want to take these lessons to Bangladesh.
The problem here is that nothing Chowdhury describes is foreign to most any developed nation on Earth. Biometrics systems, mobile payments, even paying taxes by mobile payment system isn’t unique to Bangladesh.
Granted, Chowdhury does seem to be pushing the Bangladeshi government and people as hard as he can in the direction of universal mobile operations, but the only thing any different about his stance and pretty much the rest of the world’s is that no one’s actively pushing mobile payments as a governmental function.
While certainly, Bangladesh is making some major moves in the mobile payment sector, calling it the nation to beat is probably a bit of nationalistic exaggeration. Still, Bangladesh is pushing forward in downright admirable fashion; they may not be the leader, but they won’t be far behind.