Title: E-cash

MGT427

Strategic Human Resource Management

Presented to:

Dilara Afroz Khan

Assistant Professor

BRAC Business School

Presented by:

Rifat Morshed

Soumick Ayon 15204037

Shakib Rashid Khan 15104060

Asif Mahmood 15104113

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Executive Summary
E-cash is a digital financial company where we provide banking services but online. Here we
provide all the necessary services that a person can have through bank but we are giving them
the privilege to use that service online, through their phones. Using out well developed app
our customers can cash in, cash out, pay bills, buy transport tickets and even pay restaurant
bills. All these services are available and our customers can take full advantage of it.
Currently in the online banking industry there are not many competitors so we decided to
grab that opportunity and fight against the existing companies of similar industry. People can
use this online banking service from anywhere in the world and at anytime which allows
them to have that complete freedom of using our service. We also give the privilege of
depositing money to our system which gives our customers some extra privileges. We have
researched our market properly to find out exactly what we need to do and what our
customers are expecting to have. All in all, we are hoping to have a sustainable and
successful business in this industry.
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Profile of the Team

Chief Executive Officer Soumick Ayon

Chief Financial Officer Asif Mahmood
Head of Marketing and Operations Rifat Morshed
Human Resource ManagerShakib Rashid Khan
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Industry Overview
“I can’t overstate how mobile is changing how we interact with our consumers, we have to
embrace these changes,” explained by Joel Anderson, CEO, Wal-Mart who realized that
mobile phones are one of the fastest adopted technology ever, adding nearly 5 billion
subscribers from 2004 till 2014. Mobile commerce, also known as "m-commerce", is the use
of wireless handheld devices like cell phones and tablets, to conduct commercial transactions
online, including the purchase and sale of products and online banking among others.
Bangladesh is one of the top 5 fastest growing economies, according to World Bank, leading
to rise in mobile users which dramatically increase the prospect of m-commerce in the
country. Mobile commerce is an increasingly large subset of electronic commerce, a model
where firms or individuals conduct business over the internet. The use of mobile technology
as a payment gateway was started in 1997 when Coca-Cola introduced the initial two-cell
telephone empowered candy machines in Finland which could send portable installments to
the candy machines by means of SMS. Later in 1999, I-mode, the first online mobile
commerce was born which allowed users browse the net, read emails, download
entertainments and access other services. Bangladesh entered the era of mobile
communication in 1989 when the first operator license was issued to Pacific Bangladesh
Telecom Ltd for providing mobile phone and paging services in collaboration with the Hong
Kong Based company which began its operation in 1993 under the brand name of City Cell.
Bangladesh is a success story of MFS (Mobile Financial System) worldwide. Increasing
access to financial services through digital financial accounts is crucial for development of
Bangladesh. Digital Financial Services (DFS) in Bangladesh is mainly synonymous to mobile
financial services (MFS) due to the emergence of bKash in 2010 which has managed to fill a
vacuum that was previously being catered to by logistics companies transferring funds at high
charges and informal networks of money mules. Currently, 18 banks and NBFIs have an
MFS license and as of December 2018, there are close to 67 million users using the service
with an average transaction of BDT 316 billion being conducted each month, growing at an
average CAGR of 2% (Bangladesh Bank, 2019). Given the expansion of mobile money and
agent banking in Bangladesh, the case for promoting digital financial services (DFS) is
strong. Thus, the team believes financial inclusion is absolutely necessary for seamless
growth of the industry. Financial inclusion promotes economic growth by enabling people to
diversify their portfolios and meet their cash liquidity requirements.
Mobile technologies and services generated 6.2 percent of the country’s GDP in 2015, a
contribution that amounted to around US$13 billion of economic value. In the same year,
mobile operators and the ecosystem provided employment to more than 760,000 people
across Bangladesh. Mobile financial services (MFS) guidelines have helped establish this
market. Although the sustained efforts of a few financial services providers have contributed
to the expansion of DFS, two providers continue to dominate the market. Further, while the
government is responding to the emerging national interest to improve market
competitiveness by introducing agent banking, some aspects of the MFS regulatory
guidelines such as ownership structure, the role of non-bank entities, investment promotion,
and unstructured supplementary service data (USSD) pricing have yet to be addressed
(UNCDF, 2017).
Bangladesh has achieved tremendous growth in mobile money uptake yet lagging behind in
usage. The barriers to the providers including duplicate regulatory regimes are being
streamlined to open markets further and improve the ability of providers to compete.
Moreover, space for innovation in DFS has been created by the regulators with agent banking
among recent innovations. The available data show that from the introduction of mobile
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money in 2012 to 2017 more than 37 million people signed up (UNCDF, 2017). Over the past
five years, improvements in the regulatory environment, coupled with the promotion of
information and communication technologies, have led to growth in the number of mobile
money subscribers. This growth has been primarily driven by the green- fielding bKash and
to a lesser extent Dutch Bangla Bank. “Nonetheless, 57 percent of the population do not have
a financial account, and of the 43 percent that do, only 33 percent have a mobile account.
Moreover, only 9 percent have it registered and only 8 percent use it actively. The
registration of bank users has been averaging at 18 percent over the past five years; further,
the uptake of mobile money steadily rose from 3 percent in 2013 to 9 percent in 2015.”
(UNCDF, 2017)
This rise in the uptake of mobile money may signal that non-banking consumers prefer
mobile phones as payment instruments compared with accessing formal banking services. In
parallel, the active use of mobile money rose from 3 percent in 2013 to 8 percent in 2016
compared with bank use that, albeit steady at 12–13 percent over the past five years, has not
been rising (Hossain, 2019). However, despite the growth in mobile money accounts, most
user transactions (95 percent) are still person-to-person (P2P) with only 15 percent of
customers using mobile technologies for advanced activities such as bill payments and loan
activities, suggesting that these services are either unavailable or that customers do not need
or know about them. (Bangladesh Bank, 2019) Additionally, DFS have not yet been
optimized to expand financial services to women and the poor. Indeed, the significant gender
gap in mobile phone ownership (only 46 percent of women own a mobile phone compared
with 76 percent of men) might explain why women are not yet benefiting from MFS.
Moreover, undocumented cross-border remittances and over-the counter (OTC, or agent-
assisted) transactions persist, averaging 86 percent of all mobile money transactions , which
signals a lack of monitoring and appropriate supervision to curb the practice as well as the
failure of providers to convince and educate customers about the benefits of the registered use
of mobile money accounts compared with OTC transactions. As a result, customers in
Bangladesh do not fully benefit from mobile money use and are not empowered to do so.
What has been encouraging is the ability of DFS in creating greater financial inclusion for the
country. According to recent Financial Inclusion Insights (FII) data (2018), around 47% of
Bangladeshi adults are financially included with 17% having a registered mobile money
account, 25% with a full-service bank account and 23% with a full-service NBFI account.
Only the previous year the financial inclusion of the country stood at 37% (Saha, 2019).These
figures show encouraging leaps in financial inclusion and technology adaptability of the
population.

Similar to bKash, DBBL’s Rocket, a mobile money app is considered to be the second largest
player in the DFS market. DBBL is one of the leading local banks in Bangladesh and has the
largest network of ATMs in the country that are capable of DFS transactions, which is why
Rocket has been so popular among users. There are a couple of solely mobile money
transaction players [Payment Service Providers (PSPs)] such as Upay, Pay360, and iPay
(similar to Paytm of India) but they haven’t been able to scale up due to regulatory
constraints.
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Around 28% of DFS transactions are still being conducted as Over The Counter (OTC)
transactions through agents and the challenge for DFS providers is moving users towards
more personal account based transactions. Readiness indicators of the user group are
encouraging with at least 92% of users having a National ID, a basic requirement for opening
DFS accounts. (Saha, 2019)
Industry experts believe close to 2% of women clients are now unofficially using mobile
money to make repayments and are utilizing DFS. Even if just a 15% transaction digitization
is achieved this year, the industry could transform the lives of close to 4.5 million women in a
matter of months.
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Figure: Financial Services in Bangladesh (Bangladesh Bank, 2019) and (Jaheed Parvez,
Ariful Islam, & Josh Woodard, 2015) (a2i, 2017)

Types of M-commerce services offered in Bangladesh

In Bangladesh, mobile commerce means mobile financial services, which includes mobile
billing, mobile ticketing, mobile remittance, balance transfer and mobile banking. Other
services of m-commerce such as watching news, sports, videos, music through mobile
internet are considered as a value added service (VAS) in Bangladesh.

BillPay through mobile phone

In 2006, GP, in a joint venture with the Bangladesh Power and Development Board (PDB),
launched Utility bill payment through mobile phone called ‘BillPay.’ Customers responded
very positively to this ‘BillPay’ service because of quick and convenience when compared to
traditional services. In 2007 the number of bills paid through Grameen Phone’s ‘BillPay’
service were 141,000, which increased sharply to 1.66 million in 2009 and worth over 1.64
billion takas. Revenue of 10.78 million taka was earned through this Grameen Phone’s
‘BillPay’ service in 2010.
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Mobile remittance

Bangladesh is moving towards its commitment of being digitized by launching a remittance

transferring system through mobile phones. Mobile remittance was first offered in
Bangladesh as well as in south Asia by Banglalink, the second biggest operator in
Bangladesh, in April 2010, jointly with two leading banks, Dhaka Bank Ltd and Eastern Bank
Ltd. Bangladeshi expatriates will be able to send their money easily and quickly within a day
through their mobile phone free of cost.

Mobile ticketing

Buying train ticket through mobile phone called ‘Mobitaka’ was first introduced by Grameen
Phone, jointly with Bangladesh Railway, on 4th of March 2010. It saved time and helped to
avoid the painful traffic jams of Bangladesh. Customers using Grameen Phone’s ‘Mobitaka’
service are able to book or purchase a railway ticket 10 days prior to their travel.

Mobile banking

The central bank has given guidelines on “Mobile Financial Service for Bank” in September
2011. It has given 10 licenses to bank to perform full-fledged financial services using mobile.
The two leaders have come forward with largest customer based and agent networks. The
bKash was provided by BRAC bank and DBBL Mobile banking is provided by Dutch Bangla
Mobile bank. Now mobile banking has become a very popular media to perform any financial
activity. Mobile banking in Bangladesh is normally called SMS banking because the account
balance and transaction information are sent to the customer’s mobile phones as SMS
(BRAC Bank, Premier Bank, Dhaka Bank and Standard Chartered Bank). These include
cash-in, cash-out, merchant payment, utility payment, salary disbursement, foreign
remittance. ‘Bkash’,an MFS (Mobile financial system) launched in July 2011, has registered
2.2 million customers and still growing. Thirty thousand agents are working on behalf of
Bkash who spread throughout the country covering almost 90% mobile users. Bkash users
have electronic money in their mobile wallet account which can access a range of services
including person to person (P2P) transfer, international remittance, merchant payment with a
small service fee such as BDT 2 ($.02) for P2P transfer and fee for cash out is just 1.85% of
the total cash withdrawn. BRAC Bank, Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and the four major
MNOs are behind Bkash who are providing their technical and financial support until today.

Information and entertainment based mobile services

Cellbazar, an information based mobile commerce application, was launched by Grameen

Phone in 2006. It was founded by Kamal Quadir with his innovative idea of bringing the local
market

into the mobile phone. Cell Bazaar, the unique application of Grameen Phone, facilitates the
buying and selling of products over the mobile phone. Similar services were also offered
later by other mobile operators such as Banglalink and Robi. Many other information based
mobile services provided by Banglalink are travel guide, news for agriculture, job link,
marriage link, health link, blood bank, Islamic services, emergency services among others.
Various entertainment-based services are also provided by the leading MNOs of Bangladesh
including mobile radio, music, ringtone, friend finder, BBC Bangla, song dedication among
others.
At present, the financial institutions are focusing more on data analytics and mobile
technology, where the FinTech companies are focusing on developing technology to excel
the digital customer services. Mobile financial services, cash-in, cash-out, mobile recharge,
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payment, and remittance are gaining popularity as recognized FinTech in Bangladesh

because of the regulated environment, corporate culture and governance, USSD driven
technology, automation, data security population demographics and attracting an investor.
However, IT security, regulatory limitations, and the difference in culture are still playing the
role of key challenges to sustain digital financial operation in Bangladesh. FinTech
companies create an ecosystem that fosters the collection of vast amounts of data and
builds trusted relationships with clientele. Financial institutions have realized the importance
of these ecosystems and are attempting to engage with and bring innovation inside their
companies (Global FinTech Report, 2017).
The central bank issued guidelines on “Mobile Financial Services for Banks” in September
2011 clearly stating a choice to make the market bank-led (Dona.P.D, Mouri.S.I, Hasan.M,
Abedin.Z, Significance of Exponential uses of Mobile Financial Services (MFS) in
Bangladesh, 2014). Since the inception of MFS in 2011, Bangladesh experienced robust
growth in a number of account holders, volume and amount of transactions in MFS. With a
view to providing an orderly, enabling and competitive environment for optimal utilization of
the new windows of opportunity for extension of the traditional financial services, the Board
of Directors of Bangladesh Bank (BB), in terms of Section 7A(e) and section 82 of the 6
Bangladesh Bank Order 1972, and in terms of Section 26 (cha) of Bank Companies Act ,
1991 (amended in 2013), has decided to issue Bangladesh MFS Regulations 2018 replacing
theGuidelines on MFS for Banks, issued in September 2011 and its subsequent
amendments (Rashid.L, Bangladesh Mobile Financial Service Regulations, 2018). A good
number of empirical pieces of literature reveal that finance contributes to growth by allowing
the efficient intermediation of resources among savers and investors (Beck and de la Torre,
2006; Beck, Demirgüç-Kunt, and Levine, 2004). However, banks are unable to include a
great portion of our population due to lack of direct access in the product and services and
high charges. This population, deprived of traditional banking service enjoys the benefits of
mobile financial service the most for the absence of critical infrastructure and easy access.
MFS has now become a strong tool for building digital Bangladesh. Since inception, the
growth of mobile financial services (MFS) is encouraging and it now provides services
among 41.9 million customers. However, much effort needs to expand the MFS market with
customized services which include encouraging users to use personal account in
transactions, concerted efforts for removing insecurity problems of agents in handling big
amount, coordinated steps to lower transaction cost and monitoring ML and TF issues in
MFS closely (Nabi.G, Sarder.M.R, Moula.G, Sarder.W, Do Mobile Financial Services
Promote Ethical Banking In Bangladesh, 2016). The main issue that should be taken care of
for electronic payments system is Authentication which identifies the buyer and also makes
sure that the person is who he/she claims to be. Used methods are i.e. digital signature,
fingerprints, two steps verification (like Gmail), password or smartcards etc. Data integrity
which means, that there must be a way to verify that data is not changed during the
transactions. Confidentially must also be preserved. bKash is the first complete and
successful mobile financial service provider in Bangladesh affiliated with four telecom
operators. The bKash mobile wallet is a VISA technology platform which is fully encrypted to
ensure most secure transactions, will be the customer account into which money can be
deposited and out of which money can be withdrawn or used for various services.
Customers will be able to receive electronic money into their bKash accounts through salary,
loan, domestic remittance, and other disbursements and 7 eventually will cash out the
electronic money from bKash authorized agents/ATM (Uddin.M.S and Akhi.A.Y, 2014).
The factors that have facilitated the speedy growth of bKash are- a specialized organization
built to deliver mobile financial services; a shared vision for scale among a diverse investors
group; and an enabling and flexible regulatory environment (Chen and Rasmussen, 2014).
Total registered MFS customer account is 28.64 million; the total number of the agent is 0.53
million, and average transaction per day is BDT 4.32 billion (BB Annual Report, 2014-15).
Although a good number of banks are operating MFS, a significant market share (number of
customers) is captured by bKash of BRAC Bank Limited (58%), followed by Rocket of Dutch-
Bangla Bank Limited (16.6%), UCash of United Commercial Bank Limited (7.7%) (Parvez, et
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al., 2015, p.14). (Islam.R and Hossain. S.Z, 2018).

DFS Current Status and Challenges (Mujeri, 2017)

Figure 1 Access to any finance - %

▪ Bangladesh has seen phenomenal 60
growth in DFS and over 50 million
people are directly linked to DFS. 50
Furthermore, it was noted that MFS 40
has provided access to more financial
30
services which generates more
inclusion, leads to more income 20
generation and alleviation of poverty. 10
Still, there is a shortage of evidence or 2013 2014 2015
data around how to close the gap 0
further. (UNCDF, 2017)
Bank NBFI MM Any financial
▪ Foreign investment in DFS is strong service
in Bangladesh, coming from countries
like Hong Kong and Canada.
Consistent and favourable
regulatory policies encourage investment in this sector as evidenced by interest from
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), World Bank, and Banks and
Entrepreneurs from home and abroad (Mujeri, 2017).

▪ Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) - Reluctance of telecoms in

providing connectivity was said to be responsible for drawing investment less than
expected from banks. Most of the banks could not secure a USSD and hence they
could not operate on a level playing field. Work is going on with the BTRC to
address this. (Bangladesh Bank, 2019)

▪ Regulatory environment - Banks are also worried about investing in the sector
fearing that they might be flagged down by the central bank. Some smaller
operators, with less information about DFS believed that banks’ preference was to
give loans to those who are already established in the market Furthermore, despite a
high degree of interest among potential operators there are only relatively few
players in the DFS market. (Bangladesh Bank, 2019)

▪ Linking MFS accounts to bank accounts is holding growth of DFS back. Although It
would help wallet owners get loans more easily Bank accounts cost more than
mobile wallets and therefore results in lower uptake. (Mujeri, 2017)

▪ Financial literacy is considered a barrier to DFS development. It is one of the

reasons that OTC is preferred and why ‘Know Your Customer’ (KYC) formal
procedures make access difficult for low income people, including women.
Furthermore, more familiar products such as the digital hundi [digital version of
India’s traditional ‘bill of exchange’) was behind the remittance fall of 17 per cent
this year. The volume is decreasing despite the fact that more people are sending in
money and friendly regulations exist (Saha, 2019).
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● Women in general are not benefiting from DFS. There was a very
thin presence of women in the roundtable and it was highlighted
limited inclusion of women in the DFS agent network of Over the
Counter (OTC) finance was a challenge. This is for a number of
reasons including low financial literacy, (UNCDF, 2017)

Figure 1: Case on FI for women (UNCDF, 2017) and (Jaheed Parvez, Ariful Islam, & Josh
Woodard, 2015) (a2i, 2017)

▪ DFS is susceptible to fraud, and ‘unfair use’. It was pointed out that
potential fraud, together with OTC prevalence and preference, were
the main reasons for almost half of digital wallets being inactive.
(Mujeri, 2017)

Recommendations in the overall Industry: (Mujeri, 2017) (Bangladesh Bank, 2019)

(UNCDF, 2017) (Saha, 2019) (Hossain, 2019)

Regulatory Framework (Intelligence, 2018)

● Regulators, practitioners, bankers, operators, researchers, investors and

development partners emphasised that a proper regulatory regime encouraging
DFS would be a key to further financial inclusion.
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● A pragmatic DFS strategy is needed for removing barriers to physical access

and costs. Over time, this will enable a much higher proportion of population to
use proper financial services.

Increased Competition (a2i, 2017)

● Mobile Financial Services (MFS) need to be developed as a commercially

viable, safe and competitive financial channel. To achieve this, a healthy
competition will be necessary from a wide range of providers. From the
providers’ point of view, maintaining inactive wallet is one of the most
challenging and expensive issues.

USSD connectivity and pricing needs to be addressed by both telecoms and banks to
encourage investment and entry to market. Negotiating mutually beneficial partnerships
between banks and MNOs is also important to ensure a level playing field for all. There
is a tendency to use MNOs as vendors of wireless connections rather than business
partners. In this context, Bangladesh Bank may pursue a more active intermediation and
honest broker role in bridging gaps between MNOs and banks.

Investment in Technologies (Intelligence, 2018)

● Bangladesh needs to explore how it can leverage the depth and reach of existing
digital payment platforms and develop a broad range of products financial
solutions affordable particularly for the poor.
● MFS providers could introduce new services to their platforms as and when
needed. MFS platforms can integrate more features bringing in the core banking
system taking into account the needs of low income people.
● Policies are also needed to promote the use of a diverse set of technologies,

Interoperability (a2i, 2017)

● In developing a digital ecosystem, three important issues e.g. development of

open payment platforms, interoperability and digital delivery models are to be
considered
● Smaller banks interested in entering into the DFS domain could form a
consortium and have single bank providing fully managed services to reduce
investment cost by partner banks. In such consortium, banks will be connected
to single transaction platform and it would also facilitate interoperability at
customer and agent levels.

Improvements in Agent Networks (UNCDF, 2017)

● Expanding the agent banking network is an option. There are four types of agent
banking delivery channels that can be used. These are (1) POS enabled bank
agents (2) Mobile phone enabled agents (3) Mobile wallet, and (4) Bank
provided account linked to a mobile wallet.
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● Ensuring more women are recruited into agent networks would also help
improve women’s access to DFS.

Simplify ‘Know Your Customer’ (KYC) (Jaheed Parvez, Ariful Islam, & Josh Woodard,
2015)

● There is the need to explore opportunities for leveraging national ID database to

streamline and simplify the Customer Due Diligence process using e-KYC.
● Developing financial inclusion products and related risk assessment is going
on. Also, it will assess the money laundering and terrorist financing risks
associated with financial inclusion products.
● Coordination between Bangladesh Bank and BTRC is also needed in order to
ensure that their concerns are adequately addressed to maximise the quality and
reliability of MFS products in Bangla language.

Porter's Five Forces Model:

Competitive Rivalry: HIGH

ECASH provides the platform where the customers can directly purchase goods from their
favorite stores using an e-wallet. There are some other companies like iPay and E-wallet
which provides similar services, but their strategy is completely different. As the operation
and strategy of ECASH is completely different so the customers and suppliers also have less
power. And there is less risk of losing customers. However, since the technology and MFS
industries are highly competitive owing to the fact that new advances of technology are ever
increasing, it would be difficult for eCash to assume dominance in the market. The eCash
Team believes with a resounding strategy can it achieve its goal of market dominance over its
competitive rivals.

Power of Suppliers and Customers: HIGH

The suppliers of ECASH are the account holders themselves. They act both as a supplier and
customer. Ecash regulates the operation of the entire operation which means they also focus
on the supplier side. It provides the rules and restrictions which are to be followed by the
suppliers. And as eCash is currently the only platform where you can transact out of
Bangladesh, the suppliers might feel disadvantaged as the switching cost is drastically
reduced because of this and have less power on the price and other strategies. Nevertheless,
the suppliers are the lifeblood of the whole system and therefore have significant power over
eCash.

Threat of Substitutes: MODERATE

There are some other companies like iPay and E-wallet which provides similar services, but
their strategy is completely different. So, for ECASH there is no substitute company which
gives this sort of facility to both the farmers and customers.

Threat of new entrance: HIGH

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As ECASH is the first company to avail this type of service it has got the advantage to grab
large customers without doing much extensive promotion. One of the advantages of
launching a new service is that the company can brand itself providing completely unique
and different service and because of this it gets a large number of customers, but the main
advantage is that even if a new entrant comes in the market, the company can adjust the
strategy according to the demand of the customers and focusing on the value proposition to
increase the brand loyalty and to attract more and more customers and because of this
strategy the new entrants will face a hard time getting the market share and customers.

Ultimately, the Digital Financial System (DFS) is about the creation of new business
ecosystem by bridging the physical and digital elements of business through
integration of things; connected with people and business. DFS is driving all the
elements of business (customer, enterprise/ merchant, technology, transaction,
payment ERP solution, credit rating, financing, e-commerce) towards convergence. 
Increased penetration of devices and enhanced data connectivity are facilitating
consumers with digital wallets, which provides a way to pay, send money, and manage
other required transactions. Despite impressive growth of few innovations like bKash
and Rocket, DFS has not taken a good shape and the market is yet to deepen its reach
to rural poor and women. The current regulatory ecosystem represents missed
opportunities both for regulators and private sector in offering full benefits of DFS to
the clients. Globally mobile financial services have proven to be an effective and
efficient way of providing enabling financial products and services, especially among
the unbanked population

Company Overview :
Mission Statement : Inspiring hassle free, safe cash transaction through telecom operators
and mobile base for everyone and everywhere in Bangladesh anytime within a touch.
Vision Statement: A secured, fast, hassle free cash transaction Bangladesh.
Key services : Ecash has opened a new way to connect people and create easy, safe way to
send your valuable money to your desired person. Apart from the transaction we are offering
something else to our valuable customers.
● Cash in: Here in your mobile account we will top up money. For this you have to go
to any of our agent nearby you and give him cash according to your need and agent
will balance in you account.
● Cash out: From your account you can make it hand cash by going to any of our agent.
Just go there and ask if the agent will help you to do it.
● Cash out from ATM : we have partnered up with many banks in Bangladesh so you
can directly cash out from specific ATM machines.
● Shopping : Running out of cash? Try our service to fulfill your desire . We are giving
you the opportunity to pay through us almost every shop and online payment system
with some exciting offers and points.
● Bill pay: We are offering you the payment system of any utility service through E
Cash so standing on que for hours is no longer required .
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● Movie,bus tickets: You can buy the movie, bus tickets through us. Just have to select
the movie or the route you want .
● Mobile recharge : Yes, we have mobile recharge option too. Along with that you can
see the offers of various mobile operators in our app.
● Send money: Distance can’t be an obstacle in any emergency of money. Anytime you
can send money to your desired person through our service.
● Remittance : Your harvest can be send through us globally. We partnered up with
many banks throughout the world . you just have to choose the partner , ask them for
exchange and send it.
● Interest on savings : We have the latest offer on your savings. You have a specific
amount and we will give opportunity to your money to grow with standard rate per
annum.
●
Strategic goals and objectives : Bangladesh is a broad market for this industry. Still people
don’t feel used to with it. Most of the rural people don’t even have a bank account and don’t
want to open a bank account as they thought that it as hassle and hard. So mobile banking
came up with the word easy transaction so people are trying to change their mind on that but
then again came up with safety issue to continue. So our task is to make them realize that it is
simple and safe way to make your money. Moreover the transaction system and other
offerings will be a great way to capture. Our strategy is to capture both urban and rural
people within the first phrase and make them loyal customers.

Overall strategy short term and long term: As we have said our target is to make loyal
customer base so we planned for long term and short term. Short term is to make our targeted
consumers feel that it is easy to open and use. Then let them know about our offerings and
features so that they can get the hundred percent of it. Afterwards make them feel it is safe to
work with. Our offerings like shopping, movie tickets and other reward system is for urban
people. As they actually don’t need it over card. That will be much more engaging with urban
people . the offers will surely make them use it for at least once. So this is our short term
strategy to make them use it first. Let us to show more to you.
For long term strategy we want to capture the customer for life time . We have reward,
referring system, the shopping points and discounts and many more so simultaneously we can
beat our competitors and make our customers loyal. The long term offerings have a savings
option. Where we will give interest on the savings you have in your account per annum so
that might be the way to capture a customer for a long term basis.

Market overview
Potential customers: In Bangladesh we can say we are the country where daily basis
workforce is more than the white collar jobs. Moreover, the young people are the most
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valuable one. So to determine or to segment our customers we got segments like young
people, daily wage people, long distance and less income people, who have mobility and
work in different segment, persons who don’t want hassle and safe way to save money. So
their age group can be 18+ years to 55+ years persons. Among them are mostly men and we
have a small portion of women in gender based segment. Besides most of them are young
people aged 18 to 28 and they use it in many ways apart from savings. So the potential
customer base is quite large and we cannot ignore the fact.

Size and growth of the market : In Bangladesh there is around 16 million people, among
them around 15 percent use bank account or bank facility on the contrast around 22 percent
of people use mobile banking system for their handy and easy way to use. So it could be said
that the market is huge more than banking system. Previously it was near 17 percent and this
year it is 22 percent so the growth rate is clearly visible. For example Currently, bKash is
running a network of more than 180,000 agents throughout urban and rural areas of
Bangladesh with over 30 million registered accounts.In 2017, bKash was ranked as the 23rd
company in the annual list of Fortune Magazine's 'Change the World in 2017' among the top
50 companies to make changes based on social issues. So it can be said that the market is
large and the growth and opportunity is huge.
 18

Strategic group analysis :

Now here we can see the mobile banking industry. In the below we have Mcash and Mycash
they have less service lineup and the availability is poor. Then we can see Ucash. Its service
line up is poor but the availability is moderate. Right after that we have Rocket and Nagad
both have high availability but newly launched Nagad has a very good line of service rather
than any company in the industry. bKash could be said the market lead as they have a large
number of service and offerings more than its competitors . We are compiling all those
together with service and offers and the availability will be top notch to go on and be the new
market lead.
Core competency is an organization's defining strength, providing a foundation from which
the business will grow, seize upon new opportunities and deliver value to customers.

E-cash’s Existing Core Competencies

1. Client/Customer Service: E-cash is is a very dynamic and secure digital financial

service that facilitates customers' daily financial transaction needs. Our job is to keep
our customer service secured and easy so that our customers feel comfortable and
secured using our system. We also try to adapt to new strategies to cope with
upcoming issues and customer feedbacks to get the service up-to-date. This shows our
ability to develop new strategies and to think outside the box in order to get the job
done.
2. Computer Competency: Our service is based on software or app service. So we have
to be very careful and skilled on our apps development and how our customers are
giving their feedback about our service. As we have competent employees on
computer we are able to cope up with any issues that may arise.
3. Flexibility: We are very much confident in our flexibility. Our customers can use our
service from anywhere in the country and any time for money transaction whether its
sending money or receiving, with the help of our app they can do it swiftly. However
 19

they are to face any issue they can contact our 24/7 customer care and our guys will
fix it within the given time as we have confidence in our computer competency.

E-cash’ Future Competency

1. Project Management: The ability and knowledge to bring together all aspects of a
project that are essential to its timely and efficient completion.
2. Risk Management & Assessment: We are planning to make our risk management
team stronger so that any problem may arise and they can adapt to it faster. Basically
to have a process of taking action to evaluate health and safety risks in order to
minimize threats to our company and its employees.
3. Faster Response Time: We already have 24/7 customer care service, but we are also
planning to make it a larger side to make it more easy for our customers to contact
have their problems solved at higher rate

Product/Service Overview

E-cash is a very dynamic and secure digital financial service that facilitates
customers’ daily financial transaction needs like cash-in, cash-out, send money, mobile
recharge etc. Cash-in service lets you deposit money into your E-cash digital financial service
account. YOu can also withdraw money from your E-cash Account. If you are unable to cash
out or facing any sort of transaction issue you can call our hotline number and tell us your
problem and our team will help you to fix it. Other than cash in and cash out money from
your digital e-cash account you can also recharge your own cellular number from our service.
With the help of our e-cash app you can go to recharge your number option and recharge the
amount you need for you phone’s balance. Mobile Recharge done! You will receive a
confirmation message from Nagad. You can recharge mobile or pay postpaid mobile bills for
the mobile network operators below:-

● Airtel
● Grameenphone
● Banglalink
● Robi
● Teletalk

Facilities

❖ We also provide some extra facilities if you deposit your money into our digital
banking system. To enjoy this facility our customers only have to deposit their money
in their account and just like normal banks we will provide some facilities to our
customers in our own possible ways. Our Customer will receive the highest profit for
deposit amount in his/her E-cash account. If our customers deposit their money in our
system as time passes they will receive a certain amount of profit in an annual rate.
❖ Our customers could receive & transfer funds from anywhere across the country and
abroad on 24*7.
❖ You could donate online and also send a money order.
 20

❖ It provides online shopping facility. By using Internet banking, you could recharge
prepaid mobile, DTH Connection, Data cards etc.
❖ One could also book flights, trains, buses, movie tickets and also pay bills.
❖ Less paper work means less use of paper. So, it is good for the environment.
❖ It also provides facilities to buy shares, bonds, mutual funds, and insurance products
etc. at a click.

Equipment & Machinery

1. Computers for our customer care to work on

2. Stable Internet connection to connect to our customers needs
3. An app for our customer to use swiftly

Quality Assurance

E-cash is a digital financial system and our customer wants to have a secured online system
to deposit and withdraw money. As its an online system our job is to provide our customers
with the most secure system so that they feel like their money is in good hands. We are to
assure the quality of our service for our users and that is why we have dedicated customer
care service and a highly developed app which is also user friendly for our customers to use
but also secured with pin lock and fingerprints etc. We assure our customer needs through our
service and our user friendly app to make their transaction more efficient and less time
consuming. With just a click on the phone through our app they can conduct transactions and
pay bills and even deposit money while earning a little bit of profit. As an online banking
system we give priority to quality to our service rather than quantity with utmost sincere and
top most security.

7. Marketing Plan for ECash

 21

Marketing Plan

ECash plans to segment the market in a mixture of Demographic (Income, Social Status,
Occupation), Psychographic (Lifestyle, AIO), Geographic (Density,City, Population) and
behavioral (Usage, Buyer stage, User status) variables. However, it is safe to say that ECash
is a multi-sided platform, either B2B, B2C or C2C, that connects end customers to its
producers (i.e the farmers)
 22

Marketing Mix:

Product/Service:
ECash offers an innovative platform (app and website) where it is easy to use and convenient
with a tutorial system provided for first-time users. It boasts of using intricate technologies
such as data mining to find the perfect place to buy/sell and aims to offer future/forward/swap
contracts in the future using financial derivatives. These core technologies are inimitable and
non-substitutable giving ECash an edge over any potential competitors.

Place:
Since ECash is a multi sided platform, it does not necessarily sell commodities. However, its
channel of user sales and acquisition would be through the Internet, mobile and formal
banking.

Price:
ECash’s core target customers are essentially the people without access to formal banking
systems (where ECash would follow a penetration strategy providing cost leadership service
fee and freemium services too), the distributors/agents (here ECash again follow a
penetration strategy to gain the trust of the distributors and get their distribution channels)
 23

and customers (here ECash would follow a skimming strategy due to the fact that ECash
provides an unique service to the market and balancing off future threats of new entrants).

R C A
e Low-income Farmers End-Consumers (Middle Class and Higher
v income groups)
e D B
n Butterfly customers Agent Bankers
u
e PROFIT

Promotion:
ECash aims to use social media to gain exposure and invest in ads and offers on our
Facebook page and have a direct channel with your customers on Twitter. Networking on
LinkedIn—both at the personal and company level—can be another way to grow our startup.
Starting a blog will aid ECash to get its name out through followers and also connect with
your consumers more directly.
ECash plans to use YouTube to distribute creative promotional videos and using Google
Adsense would provide relevant ads to our target customer.
Using Customer Relationship Management software to better understand trends to upsell or
cross sell or acquire sales lead.
Search engine optimization is one of the most important tools that ECash will employ.
However, the most important promotional tool that ECash plans to employ is something
called the “Network Effect” which has been mastered by BRAC NGO in their micro-credit
finance programs where ECash will employ a community leader/farmer who will guide and
convince other farmers to join the cause.

People: Since ECash is a social business, it plans to give more than take and will employ
people whose values are consistent with ECash’s aim of social good. Community leaders in
different municipalities will be ECash’s direct employees while others include a team of
developers and business development managers in the introductory stage.

Process:
 24

Using dataset mining ECash finds the best customers to the best price to the best customer
and agent in remote villages. It uses the FinDex Dataset and the Power Data set for data
mining. It aims to connect the customers without access to formal banking into the financial
system of the country. ECash boasts of a short and efficient supply chain that can cut down
costs by almost 40-60%.

Physical Environment:
Physical evidence here is minimal other than paper trails in escrow services.

1. Web Presence
ECash needs to have substantial Web Presence since it operates over the Internet while
making sure that the website is attractive, clearly presents what we do, who we are and
provides social proof of success. Through establishing an online presence, branding and
positioning should be done along with distribution channel analysis as said in 50% rule.
2. Customer Relationships
ECash hopes to keep current customers happy and engaged due to the fact that happy
customers stay loyal and also bring new customers while continually finding ways to bring
value and service to our existing customers in unique and personal ways.
3. Social Media
 25

Staying active with your community is one of the main aims of ECash because social media
presence is now becoming the indicator of life in a business. ECash hopes to keep content
fresh on social media profiles to indicate active presence online and also become a place for
quick customer support. Develop a timeline: Milestones What is important is
to know where you want to see your business in a year or two from now. It is important to
have projections and a timeframe in the beginning; breakdown the phases and allot a timeline
for completion. Potential phases could be
Phase 1: Planning – Create a mission statement and plan on how you want your essence of
the website.
Phase 2: Site development – Distinguish content; design the slide and create hosting site
Phase 3: Web presence –Give importance to search engine optimization; tags, keywords,
hashtags and look for potential sponsors to make your website functional
Phase 4: Social media engagement – Look for appropriate social platforms to engage with
customers and design content accordingly
Phase 5: Implement the social media plans – Develop Facebook, Twitter, Instagram profiles.
Allow ads in between videos to advertise your website and its content
Phase 6: Moving to various platforms – Develop a plan for a variety of screens; different
approaches for mobile phones and tablets, making your website adaptable to these platforms.

Points to look into after establishing the site:

 26

• Ease of checkout – does your website allow customers to save cart with an email or
additional information is required, and when they do a transaction does the site pull
information for further processes
• Customer turnover – does the site provide relevant information for the customers
• Emails – When a customer makes a specific action, are they offered subscription and
receive relevant updates to incite more
• All screen friendly – Is the site friendly to use on all screen types
• Location –Whether the site picks up on location relevant information and
automatically localize it
4. Content Creation
ECash plans to create content that is valuable to our users which will build engagement,
loyalty and also help to build our website value to search engines increasing traffic as ECash
rise up in our search engine ranking.
5. Joint Ventures & Partnerships
ECash plans to go into a strategic alliance with Bkash, Nagad and GIM app which can help
promote our services to additional customers and provide better service.
6. Affiliates & Brand Ambassadors
ECash plans to reward its loyal customers and referrers such as that employed by Drop box.
Incentivizing customers and online influencers/leaders tend to sway public image in the
positive. More than ever, purchasers are depending on reviews, referrals, and social
influence to make buying decisions.
7. Networking
ECash wants to continually practice making new relationships and maintaining the ones we
have. Building community and giving more through community women farmers aims to
build presence and creates a network effect. While on the other presenting ECash on different
seminars and platforms creates networking that is beneficial in the long run.
9 Building Blocks (Business Model Canvas)
9 building model is a business model which describes the value of an organization which
offers to various customers and partners required for creating, marketing and delivering this
value and relationship with the goal of generating profitable and sustainable revenue
streams. This business model is a blueprint for a strategy to be implemented through
organizational structures, processes, and systems for an organization. Every business
makes this model to run their business in a proper way. The nine blocks basically covers
four main areas of a business: customers, infrastructure, offer and financial viability.
 27

Figure 1 : 9 building blocks (Business model canvas)

Customer segments:
The Customer Segments Building Block talks about the different groups of people or
organizations an enterprise aims to reach and serve Customers comprise the heart of any
business model. Without customers, no company can survive for long. To satisfy customers,
a company always groups them into different segments with common needs, common
behaviors, or other attributes. Customer segments are divided into Mass niche segmented and
diversified market. Since ECash is a multi sided platform we have chosen Mass marketing as
our customer segment. Mass marketing is basically a strategy which is directed towards
attracting a huge portion of the audience. It aims to address the highest number of potential
customers while ignoring niche demographic differences. Mass marketing helps to generate
profit so fast. That is why our company “ECash” has chosen Mass marketing for massive
sales and generating profit.
Value proposition:
The Value Propositions Building Block describes how products and services can create value
for a specific customer Segment. The Value Proposition is the reason why customers turn to
one company over another.”ECash”. That is why we have decided “Customization” as our
Value proposition to very monetary transaction. It also helps to generate profit because
different people order different preferences. But there is a risk as well. If people order so little
amount of customized transactions then generating profit can be a huge problem for the
company.
 28

Channels:
Channels Building Block describes how a company should communicate with and reach its
customers to deliver a Value Proposition Communication, distribution, and sales. Channels
comprise a company’s interface with customers. Channels are customer touch points that play
an important role in the customer experience. Our company “ECash” has website and app to
reach our customers. On the other hand, our company has several warehouses and we deliver
though delivery van who have made deals with “ECash” by agreeing terms and conditions.
Distributions

● Tracking – One of the main successes that e-commerce sites

have nowadays is tracking digital footprint. With the use of
analytics and search engine optimization, owner of the site
should be able to track how one landed on the site, what they
have been searching for and whether any items were purchased
by them or dropped from the cart.

Customer relationship:
ECash has positive customer relationships. It will provide:
● 24/7 active customer support
● customer support chat box
● social media pages
● YouTube channel
 29

To stay in touch with its customers and partners, it will have excellent rating, review, and
feedback systems.

Revenue streams:
● Transaction charges
The first type of revenue stream ECash obtained is from its customers. A nominal
transaction fee of 5-10% is charged for local transactions and 20% for overseas
transactions
● Commissions
Registered Agent partners will have to pay 2% to 5% as a registration fees monthly.
● Income from affiliation
Having partnerships with various financial institutions like Citibank, HSBC, and Dhaka
Bank; ECash earns revenue by selling their credit cards to customers. This affiliate income is
a new yet successful revenue stream where both parties get benefits. It also allows customers
to receive several credit card offers from those financial companies.
Key resources:
● Data Mining
Using proprietary technology to give users the best experience
● Agent Partners
Other key resources are agent partners and its own human resources to manage
administrative and technical operations.
● Technology
Technology is another resource it uses to operate its apps.
Key partner:
 Key Partnerships Building usually deals with the network of suppliers and partners that
make the business model work. Companies make alliances to reduce risk or acquire
resources.”ECash” might have a partnership with Robi for our internet services. On the other
hand we may look for a partnership with Mindprolink an IT company for maintaining our
website.
Key activities:
Key activities are the most important things a company must do to make the business model
works. Data mining and transacting overseas are our key activities

Cost structure:
ECash has to incur costs and expenditures for its day-to-day functions. Its major cost sources
are:
 30

● Cost of application and website development.

● Administration, advertising & marketing cost.
● Running cost and maintenance charges.
● Additional costs in terms of promotional offers and benefits given to customers.
● Returns, refunds, and miscellaneous expenses.
● Payroll expenses for its agents and staff. It also includes incentives and benefits which
ECash offers to agent. For example, giving a commission of about 2- 3%.
Price:
For pricing, we have selected market penetration. Since we are working as middle man, we
need to assure that our agent partners are getting profit as well. That is why we have selected
market penetration. Basically we will charge a higher price for our overseas transaction. But
when the demand is so high we will give some special discount what will be beneficial for
users.
Long-term Sustainability

Banking system is already out there and people saves their disposable money in the bank.
However, you can't use the normal banking system to withdraw or deposit money whenever
you want. Additionally you have to go to the bank itself or to an ATM booth to withdraw
money. On the other hand our E-cash users can send money, deposit money, or withdraw at
anytime just by using our E-cash app. They can even pay their necessary bills like gas, water
and electricity. They no longer have to go to a bus or train station to buy tickets, with the help
of our app and service they can do it from their phone while being at home or at work.
Especially during festival times such as Eid, puja; buying tickets physically becomes very
hard, in that case they can use the app and buy tickets at home. This shows how our
customers can take advantage of our service.

We strive to be ranked as one of the country’s most sustainable companies in our industry.
Our responsibility for sustainable development starts with the way we do business. We are
and shall continue to be a profitable, well-capitalized bank with a clear low-risk profile. We
contribute by being part of the digital financial infrastructure that is key to a well-functioning
society. Through careful management of sustainability related risks and opportunities in our
business we will together build a better future through our customers. We integrate ethical,
social, environment risk and economic considerations in all business decisions, operations
and business development

With our services we’re promoting a sound and sustainable economy by strengthening the
bank’s and our customers’ long-term competitiveness. Furthermore we are contributing to the
development by actively promoting human rights, fair working conditions, diversity and
gender equality in our organization so none of our employees would feel being left out.
Applying our Code of Conduct, Values and Culture as a starting point in decision-making
and how we behave we believe to achieve long term sustainability.

Conclusion : Bangladesh is a land of opportunity due its cheap labor, location and friendly
atmosphere . During these days Bangladesh made a very good marketplace for business and
the technology is upgrading day by day here too. Mobile technology is one of them and
people start to love it as it is easy to use and less hassle. Using this component mobile
banking took place and it is one of the fast growing industries in Bangladesh right now. As it
is growing new companies are coming day by day. Making their life even more better with
offerings and facilities to be in the industry. It could be said that around 70 percent of the
 31

mobile users have mobile banking account and almost 90 percent people are connected with
it indirectly. Day to day it is growing and our target is to connect this generation first as they
are for long term and sustaining segment to work with. Our target is to capture their attention
then make them our loyal customer. For this we have planned for various offerings, reward,
referral points , shopping access, cashback, high mobility and many more. So we hope that
soon we will be able to capture the whole. We count it as a platform and the dynamic services
will surely drive us create strong sustainability in the market.
 32

REFERENCES
http://a2i.pmo.gov.bd/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/9-DFS-Lab-v1.pdf
https://www.gsmaintelligence.com/research/?
file=a163eddca009553979bcdfb8fd5f2ef0&download
https://www.uncdf.org/download/file/127/6422/policy-brief-advancing-access-dfs-
bangladesh-regulatory-agendapdf
http://www.cashlearning.org/downloads/mfsinbangladeshapril2015.pdf
https://www.lightcastlebd.com/insights/2019/05/23/dfs-in-bangladesh-beyond-coffee-shops-
and-consumer-purchase
https://www.lightcastlebd.com/cases/prospects-of-dfs-in-bangladesh-in-apparel-and-
microfinance
http://www.fintechbd.com/dfs-an-ecosystem-for-the-next-phase-of-fintech-transformation/
https://a2i.gov.bd/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Digital-Financial-Service-DFS-Lab.pdf

World Bank Population Data, 2017, Accessed on: 02.03.2019

● Mobile industry driving growth and enabling digital inclusion, GSMA Intelligence,
2018

● Mobile Financial Services (MFS) comparative summary statement, Bangladesh

Bank, Accessed on: 02.03.2019

● Bangladesh Quicksights Report, Financial Inclusion Insights (FII) , 2017

● http://workspace.unpan.org/sites/Internet/Documents/UNPAN99040.pdf