Nagad, the mobile financial service of Bangladesh Postal Department, has surpassed the 4 crore users’ landmark, recently. The digital financial arm of Bangladesh postal department has gone past Tk 400 crore mark of the daily transaction.
Such a spectacular success by a government service in just two years of its launching has created a buzz in the industry. Nagad has earned kudos by digitalizing the disbursement of various government allowances, stipends and financial assistance during the coronavirus pandemic.
Digitalisation has made it easy to deliver the benefit to the beneficiaries, ensured transparency, and saved the government money.
Nagad crossed the landmark of one crore customers just 10 months after Honorable Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina inaugurated the service on March 26, 2019. It took six months to onboard the next one crore subscribers and another seven months needed to raise the number of users from two crores to three crores. It took less than two months to add the last one crore customers.
The volume of transactions on Nagad has been increasing as expected from the very beginning. It crossed Tk 100-crore mark in January 2020. At one of the events at the time, Mr. Sajeeb Wazed Joy, information and communication technology adviser to the Primer, set a target of Tk 200 crore in daily transaction volume within the next one year. However, daily transaction volume doubled in December of the same year. The daily transaction crossed Tk 300 crore in March, and in one month, it crossed Tk 400 crore last week.
Posts and Telecommunications Minister Mustafa Jabbar described the rapid advancement of Nagad as a successful combination of technological innovation and the introduction of customer-friendly services. He said, “Nagad’s success had become inevitable after it set an excellent example by ensuring the freedom of financial transactions for customers at a nominal price. I have been watching the progress of Nagad from the beginning. The example Nagad has set in delivering services from the center to the remotest parts of the country through mobile phones is, in fact, one of the best examples of the government’s digitalization process. I believe Nagad will become the number one mobile financial service in the country in a very short time.”
Md. Siraz Uddin, director general of Bangladesh Postal Department, congratulated all of the employees and customers of Nagad for the excellent achievement of Nagad. He said, “Nagad has revolutionized the mobile financial service in Bangladesh. The rapid expansion of the government service has made me more confident than ever that Nagad will remain as an important part of the government’s Vision for Change.”
Commenting on the achievement, Tanvir A Mishuk, managing director and co-founder of Nagad, said, “We are working with the slogan of ‘Everything possible with Nagad’ to make all traditional services available on Nagad. We are trying to do the impossible possible every day. Opening an account by dialing *167# is not possible anywhere else in the world, but Nagad has made it possible. But there was a time when a lot of things had to be done to open an account. It is a time of great joy for us to have reached the milestone of Tk 400 crore transaction in just two years of inception. It came as we have continued our innovative efforts.”
