Dhaka, Bangladesh (BBN) – The central bank of Bangladesh has imposed restriction on opening one more mobile phone accounts in favour of a single client to avoid financial crimes and anomalies.
Under the new provisions, a client will be able to open account with not more than one mobile phone service provider, according to a central bank circular, issued on Thursday.
The Bangladesh Bank (BB) also asked the chief executive officers and managing directors of the commercial banks for taking necessary measures to close all other accounts immediately, keeping one account of the clients active.
The central bank had recently found allegations that some agents of mobile financial services opened a number of accounts with a bank, according to the circular.
The agents of the mobile financial services (MFS) subsequently conducted transaction on behalf of the unregistered clients who can resort to financial crimes, it said.
The banks usually fail to detect the financial crimes if the transaction is made in favour of the unregistered clients, the circular noted.
“The central bank has taken the latest step to minimise operational risk,” a senior BB official told BBN in Dhaka.
The BB earlier introduced guidelines on MFS aiming to bring poor and ‘un-banked’ people under banking network at an affordable cost.
The BB has already given permission to 24 commercial banks for running their mobile banking business across the country.
“Of them, 19 commercial banks have already started their mobile banking service through using mobile phone network,” the central banker said.
He also said the banks will be responsible for mitigation of all kinds of risks such as liquidity risk, operational risks, fraud risks including money laundering and terror financing risks.
BBN/SSR/AD-28Nov14-9:19 am (BST)
