Bitcoin-like money transfer service benefits 17 million Bangladeshis

We all know that Bitcoin is a great tool that can bring about a financial revolution and more importantly, it has a huge potential to benefit the huge population living in underdeveloped or developing regions that do not have access to banks. Recently, a similar incident was exposed that a Bitcoin-like money transfer service served more than 17 million Bangladeshis and processed more than $70 million in transactions every day.

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, the emergence of bKash, a leading mobile banking service company in Bangladesh, is definitely a boon for the country. The country has a total population of 160 million, but less than 30% of the population has a bank account.

Store funds in a virtual wallet

bKash allows its users to store funds in a virtual wallet that can be conveniently accessed via a mobile phone.

This allowed industrial workers, domestic servants, drivers and other laborers to transfer money instantly and at very low cost. This added up to a huge number of people, as these people had to send money home on time.

limitation

Although the system can be operated with a few basic buttons on a mobile phone, a large number of people are still opposed to the idea.

“We understand that many people find this system unreliable because they don’t have receipts or feel they might accidentally send money to the wrong address, even though it is so simple and can be operated with a basic mobile phone,” said Kamal Quadir, CEO of bKash.

What worries him is the occasional robbery at bKash points of sale. Ahsan Mansur, executive director of the Institute for Policy Studies, said that while the bKash system works well, it still does not give you complete protection because there is no insurance mechanism for what could go wrong, whether it is managing vendors or passers-by.

Precautions

There are many similarities between Bitcoin and bKash, especially in terms of benefiting users and providing cheap and reliable services. At the same time, the concepts of virtual wallets and Bitcoin wallets are easy to compare. As the mobile payment industry develops rapidly, we hope that Bitcoin can provide them with a better and cheaper option for transferring funds.