Bangladesh Bank governor Ahsan H Mansur on Wednesday said that new private investors will soon be sought for the mobile financial service provider Nagad, as part of a plan to privatize the platform as the postal department lacks the capacity to operate the MFS.
He made comments at a program 鈥楥ashless Bangladesh Summit 2025鈥� at Dhaka鈥檚 Pan Pacific Sonargaon Hotel on Wednesday. The event was jointly organised by the Institute of Cost and Management Accountants of Bangladesh (ICMAB) and Mastercard.
He said a public notice would be issued within a week to invite investors.
Discussions at the highest level of government had already been held, he added.
鈥極ur goal is to make Nagad more capable and stable. The postal department cannot run it efficiently. We want technology companies to come forward and invest in Nagad. Hopefully, within three to four months, new investors will be on board,鈥� Mansur said.
A technology company must come in as the main shareholder of Nagad, he said.
He added that significant corrections had already been introduced in the company. Many irregularities linked to the previous owners, especially around end-of-cycle (EoC) issues, had been resolved.
Around 1.5 crore fake or inactive accounts were removed, and the institution is now being restructured.
In addition, Mansur noted that the growing cost of cash transactions, noting that the expense of printing banknotes rises by about 10 per cent annually, adding around Tk 2,000 crore each year.
聽鈥業f costs keep rising like this, then where is our digital economy?鈥� he asked.
Policy Exchange chairman and CEO Masrur Reaz stressed on that Bangladesh could learn from the digital transition experiences of China, India, and Sweden.
He urged regulators to encourage innovation, expand wholesale and corporate payments, and invest in infrastructure to strengthen digital transactions.
ICT division secretary Shish Haydar Chowdhury, Mutual Trust Bank CEO Syed Mahbubur Rahman, bKash CCO Ali Ahmed, Mastercard director Zakia Sultana, and Sheba Platform chairman and CEO Adnan Imtiaz Halim among others, were present at the event.
