More than 7,000 bKash accounts have come under scrutiny after a Bangladesh Bank inspection found gaps in customer identification and unusual transaction patterns, prompting the central bank to ask the mobile financial service (MFS) provider why it should not be fined.
Some accounts showed customers aged between 100 and 150 years, while their transaction patterns raised suspicion of unusual activity, Bangladesh Bank Executive Director and Spokesperson Arief Hossain Khan told TIMES.
The central bank sought an explanation from bKash on 3 November over suspected breaches of the Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements.
Seeking an explanation is the first step after the inspection findings, and further action will depend on whether the company’s response is satisfactory, Khan said.
bKash said it opens accounts in line with regulatory KYC requirements and verifies customers’ identities against National Identity (NID) records.
It attributed many of the age discrepancies to incorrect birth dates in NID records and said all accounts identified in the inspection had been placed under enhanced due diligence, with risk mitigation measures taken.
bKash Head of Corporate Communications Shamsuddin Haider Dalim told TIMES, “All bKash accounts are opened through electronic or paper-based KYC, following the customer due diligence protocol set out in regulatory guidelines.
Customers’ identities are verified through biometric authentication against NID records in the Election Commission database.
In the e-KYC process, information is captured from the NID exactly as recorded using optical character recognition, while facial recognition is used to confirm the customer’s identity.
Any error in an NID is therefore reflected in the account records, and only the customer can change the captured information.
Many of the accounts showing customers aged 100 or above resulted from incorrect birth dates in the corresponding NID records.”
The account holders concerned have been asked to correct their dates of birth in the Election Commission database and inform bKash so that their KYC records can be updated, he said.
In some paper-based KYC cases, birth years were entered incorrectly during manual data entry, the company said, adding those unintended errors had since been corrected.
bKash is the largest MFS provider in Bangladesh, with 8.5 crore accounts.
