Sure Cash is a fintech company, one of the leading vintech companies in the country.

We develop
technologies for financial services. My background is in technology. I studied technology at BUET. Then I
worked as a faculty of BUET. I did my PHD on the same topic, worked in Canada for a long time. So I
lived in Canada for 18 years, worked with many technologies around the world, with many customers,
more than15 to 20 countries. It was intention to save (?1.14) here, while CTO of a Canadian company,
working in many countries, doing things for other countries. I felt very lucky and priveledged that I had
those experiences that I felt like okay this was not all earned. I felt there were things that I should at
least try in Bangladesh. Its from that thought, that in 2007 I came to Bangladesh and built an R&D
company for the same Canadian company that I was working for. So I came back started the software
company, still developing software for customers around the world. In that case, we are doing some
large projects for some Japanese customers. That worked very well, that gave me confidence, we can
build software in Bangladesh, using the engineers in Bangladesh. But then I sort of realized, how about
building software for this country, building services for this country. So in 2010 I packed up with my
young child and wife, and said we are going back to Bangladesh. It’s a very interesting journey. I was
going to build technology, but what kind og technology should I build? That’s when I thought what kind
of technology can be used, what kind of services do we need? What do have? Because that is where we
have to start from what we have. So we have mobile phones, don’t have computer for the masses, but
we have phone everywhere. What problem can we solve using phones? That is we sort of felt like lot of
people in the country do not have financial services, so if we can build financial services for them that
would be a good thing. And that is something that you can build with any phone. So we started building
the software from scratch, that people of this country can use, and Sure Cash was born.

Marketing strategies

What we do is basically financial services for the mass people of this country. Our thought process, we
are very techy in our DNA. We want to build solutions that work for us. That is open thing unique
compared to some of other MFS providers, or fintech providers in Bangladesh. Our own team develops
the software from scratch. And that helped us to be very flexible in terms of meeting customer’s needs.
Sure Cash is now a fintech company providing mobile banking and payment solutions to 20 million
customers. We work with 4 banks, including one fo the largest, Rupali Bank. We work with a lot of
payment partners, organization who disburse payments, collect payments. We don’t do inward foreign
remittance in a large way, but what we do is, we do a lot of college payments. More than 1000 schools
or colleges, they take fees from students through Sure Cash. This is not only a payment solution per se,
we developed the entire back end system for the education institutions. And we give them free of
charge, so they can adopt this technology. The large colleges of the country, like Dhaka college, Titumir
college, MM college, Ideal school etc. we do a lot of disbursement as well. Like when somebody needs a
disbursement solution, we also provide that. In that we have largest digitalization projects in our
country. In Bangladesh the primary education has a very good incentive. So if you are a primary student
in a government school, then government gives you some incentive every 3 months for each student.
That used to be done by physical transactions; we have now digitalized the whole process. Now 67,000
primary schools, data comes from them to us, we do the online automated verification; the money goes
to 10 million mothers. There are things here, earlier this project more money than they do today,
because of leakage, the government is now saving more than 150 crore taka annually, just because the
system is cleaner. We know the student grade, class, and their parents’ name. The database can be used
for many planning and other purposes, for example there is another program from the government,
where the government distributes free books every year. In January first there is a festival, and every
primary student gets free books. So our database is now instrumental in the distribution. Earlier they did
not know how many students were there, so they had to over print. If you look at the digital Bangladesh,
there are many safety net programs, more than 60 or something, altogether 15 million beneficiaries.
The spread is more than 25% families of this country. This program is large, we are collecting data from
so many schools, that gives a huge confidence for the digitalization, in general. There has been
international recognition about this as well. Then many large programs were initiated around the world,
and many failed, but this worked. I think this is a good combination of real public private partnership. A
public bank like Rupali Bank, working with a private company like Sure Cash, with more than 400,000
teachers of 67,000 schools. Those are large numbers. Digital is the only way to put them together. Our
honorable prime minister inaugurated the program on March 2017. For us, the big pride is the
disbursement program. Initially we collected all data in paper, I bought some scanners with the feature
of 60 pages per minute, scanning is okay, feeding is problem. i had 2 people just waiting with papers.
Once scanned, we created software to read out the data, put the database together. We sent the data in
digital format to the schools for review. Now we have a beautiful database, spread in the whole country.
It is much more than financial services, it is digitalization, data collection, data engineering and then to
do something that scales, all done by locally developed software. Another thing for example in the (?
16.20) sector, there are 15 sugar mills in Bangladesh, and they buy sugar canes, so there are sugar cane
farmers, may be 12,000 of them. The sugar cane farmers do not cut their sugar cane without an SMS
from us. Our software sends SMS, then he goes to the field and cuts the sugar cane, brings it to the
sugar mill where it gets weighed, then he gets paid. This made the transaction and payment process
much more efficient.

Sure cash, now has more than 180,000 retailers, lots of payments. We are also starting more futuristic
ones, like merchant payments.

How do you build the trust with your customers, especially in the rural area?

In some cases, we have gone more through partnerships. For the sugar cane farmers, we did not have to
do anything. They love the digitalization because they can see the results. Actually for the sugar cane
farmers, we don’t promote to them, we let them realize the benefit of our services, and rely on word of
mouth promotion through them. Same concept was applied to colleges. We call this model more like a
B2B2C model, where we are a business going to another business, we convince them, then they
convince customers. So once you convince Dhaka College, then their customers have to use you. And
nobody else is providing this kind of services. We have not yet done the best of our jobs, so we have
hired new top guns. The entire thing was mostly based on service, we have been mostly developing
software that can be considered as life changing tools. We have been giving to different schools and
colleges. The stories started spreading to people that if Dhaka College can use it then so can others. So
we have been promoting our product through product experience.
Madrid protocol

Basically if you are working in the ICT sector, you need to handle the IP rights, patents, property rights
issue, that is very important for us, since we develop technology. I have experience with this. I think we
should really of a lot more, on IP rights protection issue. My experience in Bangladesh, which I am not
sure whether I want to talk a lot about in public, the experience is not so positive. IP is a very dynamic
thing. If you go to US, where there are a lot of intellectual properties, their economy very much depends
on IP. What does Apple do?- design few products, same name, manufactured in China, but who takes
the profit, those who own the design. Google has a large office in India, own all the IPs created in India.
The ones who pay owns the right. It does not matter where they are making it. Now for us, this is a
problem, I would not like someone to copy my software and use it in a bad way. So it is especially
important, when we are in a knowledge economy, where data is the new oil.

We need to start owning. If owning matter, I think Madrid matters. Having experience with patent
issues, in Bangladesh the readiness is very weak. The patent office is Bangladesh looks like some old
school office, they don’t yet have finesse and precision in their application process. There, decisions are
not followed by any clarification, and when questioned, you end up being termed a rude person.
However, I have had prior experiences with US and European patent offices, so I know how it should be
working, but it is not functioning adequately. With a fresh mindset, this problem can be overcome.

So I think for the ICT, intellectual property issues needs to be there, then we can talk about protecting
our products and services. While doing it, we also have to respect others ownerships.

Are there plans for sure cash to go international?

Not in a big way. At this moment, in some way Sure Cash is a international organization, our investment
process is comprised of foreign investors, like Japan, Hong Kong, Canada, etc. another part of
internationality that may come with us sooner than later, is inward foreign remittance. The aim is to
create a system where money is sent as and when needed, it should be flexible. Rather than that,
expanding sure cash services in other countries, is not in the near future. We have our own technology,
so if someone comes and says they want to license our technology, which is very much possible.

How do you ensure the security of the products so that the consumers are more encouraged?

Security is anything opposite of insecurity. The feeling of insecurity is bad as any threat. When it comes
to computers, are we more secure or less secure? Let’s put it this way, earlier we had credit cards, we
had credit card frauds, and now with every transaction, you get a SMS, so fraud has reduced. Security is
a very broad varient, there are certain parts, which are awareness, confidence and comfort. Like I am
comfortable doing banking transactions via phone, others may not be. Working with the insecurity,
there is an aspect of building cultural and educational awareness. It will always be that young people are
more comfortable with technology than elderly people. When you talk about general masses, there is a
problem, because in the rural areas, we face the problem of people being able to read our messages or
not. So a large chunk of our messages are sent in Bangla. For the first time when they get the money,
they withdraw it pretty fast, but slowly the rate of withdrawal slows down, as they start trusting that
their money is safe. For the elderly of our country, they are making the slow but sure transition to
digitization, starting from land lines to mobile phones to smart phones to Viber to Facebook. So there is
a whole learning curve period, where they are getting used to new technology.

There are other issues with security. Look at ATM card, is it secure? Just don’t write your pin number on
your ATM card. Of all the things mobile financial services are safer, because the phone is more or less
always near ones vicinity. Every time you do a transaction, you get an SMS of verification. But learning
for the users, for the mass people, is not very simple. Whenever it is something online, there is risk, but
that is part of the learning curve. Whether there are more frauds happening today, I don’t know, but
fraud is immediately conveyed via media.

Encourage people to become cashless

What is fintech?why is it needed? Financial services ia a very needed thing, it has been there for a long
time. Fintech is using technology for financial services. You use technology for news, entertainment, so it
makes sense to use it for financial services. Earlier if you look at the banking services, it was very limited
in Bangladesh, only 25% had access to it. Old banking styles comes with the need of more branch offices,
run by officers, it is an expensive concept. That why certain people in certain neighborhoods could
access it. But today, banking can be different. All of this can be done using your mobile home, that way it
is a different kind of banking. In UK, there are 5 banks for ages, which have been dominating all the
customers in UK, with not much differentiation among the banks. But with new ways, you can
differentiate, you can give very good service to customers, you can value your service. If you had a good
idea of your expenses, and there was a forced savings program, then you can have more savings. You
can cater to individual needs. Convenience of doing all the transaction on the phone is huge,
combination of the type of things that you can do, the kinds of convenience you can bring, the types of
control, he combination of all is essential. In Bangladesh how many people have health insurance, no
bank is providing a program that can help people attain health insurance. So there is so much more to
do using financial services for the existing customers. Then there are so many customers that are not
served. Traditional banking used to take a lot of fees, 150 pounds per month in UK, new digital banking
system they can break even at 50 pounds. So there are lots of possibilities. Basically, better service for
customers, broader access, planned banking, efficient and affordable service for the many.

Why we develop software?

I think it is very important that we develop our own software, then we have understand out data better.
We can customize the product. Pahela boishak maybe meaningful in Bangladesh, but Chinese New Years
has its own importance.

Regulation of fintech sector

Should there be regulation on Fintech by itself? Fintech driven services is a different thing, fintech is a
technology, and the only regulation there is to not use it in a bad way. Rather we should encourage
regulation, in that everybody should use tech in a responsible way. It is still a very new sector. Financial
service has basic regulations, where they have to protect the general peoples money, public
money.public trust has to be there. The bigger question is, what should regulators do about Fintech?
The regulators should be fintech friendly. For example in hong Kong they have a chief fintech officer. So
they hired somebody who understands fintech and talks to the fintech company all the time. In
Bangladesh, MFS has more customers than banking now, but do you know the percentage of officers
dealing with banking and MFS respectively? – the ratio is 4000 to 10, banking to MFS. This things scaling
so well and so quickly, it is very difficult for central bank to adjust to it. There need to be a fort like that,
to train, expand, to give them a different floor. A new building that is the Bangladesh bank’s fintech
building. This should be encouraged. The regulators should discuss with us on what facilities we need,
and how they can help us to expand and use fintech in a responsible way. Regulators know the risk
factors of the traditional system, but they do not know about the risk factors of the new system. Lot of
them should just go abroad and get more experience. They should show interest and try to facilitate.
London would be the capital of Fintech. Our traditional banking system is pretty broken, you hear stuffs
about 30,000 crore taka are from non performing loans and things like that, because we are pretty old
style. There are 1.5 million SMEs in need of loans. Can the banks really support them? They sit in this
little cozy air-conditioned room, and they do not talk to them. We need to encourage, facilitate,
understand and of course with the risk in mind, and allow them to create regulatory sandbox, that is
happening in many countries. Then if it works, they get promoted to a bigger license holder for the
whole country. Central bank is part of the government, they cannot just scale very quickly, because our
government does not scale very quickly, but for the growing areas , we should. For example, ICT is the
big area, we need to invest more in the ICT in the university, in the incubators, in the industry, in the
ministry; so people talk about ICT and use it more. That means encouraging and promoting. This is
largely possible due to having an ICT minster. I am not saying we should have a fintech minister per se,
even have a fintech division in the ministry can go a long way.