Bangladesh Bank’s interoperable payment platform Bangla QR faces significant setbacks as bKash, the country’s largest mobile financial services provider, obstructs interoperability and restricts transactions that were meant to flow seamlessly across the system, according to officials and users.
Launched in January 2021, Bangla QR was hailed as a pivotal move away from a fragmented network of incompatible QR codes, promising a unified national standard where customers of any bank or mobile wallet could pay any merchant through a single code.
However, years after its debut, the platform has been sidelined by bKash, preventing it from gaining the momentum that policymakers had envisioned.
A TIMES of Bangladesh investigation, drawing on a Bangladesh Bank research paper and extensive user testimony, reveals a growing gap between the regulator’s mandate for interoperability and the reality faced by merchants and customers.
The consequences are clear: a cashless transition stuck in limbo, merchants locked into proprietary QR silos, and competition in digital payments steadily eroding.
Stakeholders say the system is fully operational, routed through the national switch and engineered as a low-cost, homegrown alternative to global card networks. Yet adoption remains thin, and momentum is faltering.
At the heart of the deadlock lies bKash’s vast merchant network, estimated by officials to cover about 450,000 outlets across the country.
Although all institutions were directed to replace proprietary QR codes with Bangla QR, merchants and users told TIMES that bKash has introduced the national standard slowly and selectively, keeping large parts of its network locked into its own closed system.
Md Azharul Islam, a small trader, said he contacted the bKash call centre on 23 January this year to request Bangla QR. He was told the service was not being provided and that only large merchants were receiving the code.
Posing as a small shopkeeper, this reporter called the same centre and received the same response.
User complaints point to further barriers once Bangla QR is in place. Alamgir Hossain, a merchant, told TIMES that there is no limit on payments from bKash to bKash Bangla QR. But payments from bKash to Bangla QR codes issued by other banks or MFS providers are capped at Tk10,000 per day.
Other users reported failed or delayed transactions when paying non-bKash Bangla QR merchants through the bKash app.
Bangladesh Bank officials told TIMES that they found no faults in the National Payment Switch Bangladesh (NPSB) infrastructure and confirmed that the national system is technically fully operational. They said bKash had been formally asked to fix the issues, but progress on corrective action has been slow.
Officials familiar with the matter described the pattern as deliberate resistance to interoperability that restricts the flow of funds from bKash to rival platforms, reinforcing its market dominance.
Responding to the findings, Bangladesh Bank spokesperson Arief Hossain Khan told TIMES that bKash has been repeatedly urged to quickly replace proprietary QR codes with Bangla QR across all its merchant points, but progress has been slow.
The central bank executive director said bKash has shown reluctance to speed up the rollout. He added that although there is no transaction limit under Bangla QR, payments above Tk10,000 are sometimes blocked, while at other times transactions exceeding Tk10,000 go through.
In a statement to TIMES, bKash said it has expanded its merchant network nationwide in line with Bangladesh Bank’s cashless drive and is migrating from proprietary QR codes to interoperable Bangla QR.
A significant number of merchants already accept Bangla QR, it said, adding that the nationwide rollout, covering large enterprises to micro-businesses, is labour-intensive and being implemented step by step, Shamsuddin Haider Dalim, head of Corporate Communications at bKash, said in the statement.
He added that successful adoption depends on coordinated efforts by the regulator and other ecosystem partners, along with stronger customer awareness and incentives.
Many yet to join Bangla QR
Recent research from the Chief Economist’s Unit of the central bank, conducted in June 2025, reveals that only 49 out of 95 eligible financial service providers have joined Bangla QR.
This number has since increased to 51, with 3 of 21 Payment Service Providers (PSPs) and Payment Service Operators (PSOs), 7 of 13 Mobile Financial Services (MFS), and 41 of 61 banks now signed on to the platform.
Transactions initially showed signs of life, rising from just 197,000 in FY23 to 4.68 million in FY24. But that momentum did not last. In FY25, usage fell by 12.3 per cent, even though the total value of transactions reached Tk21 billion.
The bigger picture shows how marginal Bangla QR still is. During the same period, people withdrew Tk11,330 billion in cash through ATMs and mobile financial services, highlighting that digital interoperability remains insignificant compared to the country’s overwhelming reliance on cash.
Researchers told TIMES that the central bank had been trying to operationalise Bangla QR since 2021, yet not a single partner came on board until the second half of 2023. Even after the system became technically ready, everyday retail use has remained negligible, far from the scale needed to make interoperability meaningful.
High fees blunt Bangla QR adoption
Beyond technical barriers, pricing has become a powerful brake on Bangla QR adoption, especially for small traders operating on razor-thin margins, stakeholders say.
The merchant discount rate was first capped at 0.70 per cent for individual payments and later set at a flat 1.15 per cent, with the NPSB fee withdrawn.
Even so, most banks and MFS providers charge between Tk7 and Tk10 per Tk1,000 transaction, while bKash applies the ceiling rate of Tk11.50 despite using the national platform free of cost.
Bangladesh Bank researchers told TIMES that such charges discourage merchants from accepting digital payments and from opening new merchant accounts, particularly small businesses where profit on Tk1,000 in sales can be as little as Tk15 to Tk20.
The central bank has tried to force momentum through policy. A circular dated 8 February 2023 removed the previous Tk20,000 daily cap on Bangla QR transactions and instructed banks to launch Bangla QR in their apps by 30 June that year.
More recently, Bangladesh Bank directed that payments under Tk10 lakh through Bangla QR must be settled instantly to merchant accounts from 15 December 2025.
Separately, a directive from the Local Government Division (LGD) made Bangla QR linkage mandatory for trade licence issuance and renewal, aiming to push the system nationwide and cut the cost of printing and distributing currency notes, estimated at about Tk10,000 crore a year.
Despite these interventions, uptake remains weak. Bangladesh Bank estimates cash still accounts for about 35 per cent of formal retail transactions in FY25, compared with 4 per cent in India and 10 per cent in Pakistan.
Researchers have pointed out that high charges are discouraging merchants from accepting digital payments and from opening new merchant accounts. According to them, service providers are extracting excessive profits, which is exacerbating merchant resistance to digital payments.
Global comparisons highlight the extent of the failure. In countries like India, Singapore, Malaysia, and Brazil, interoperable digital payments operate on a single platform with minimal or no charges for small transactions, researchers noted.
In India, under the interoperable UPI platform, merchants are not charged for transactions below 2,000 rupees. For these low-value payments, both the issuer and acquirer receive 0.15 rupees per transaction from a fund established by the central bank and the Indian Banks’ Association (IBA).
