Jomila wakes before the city does.
By the time the first call to prayer echoes across Sanarpar, she has already cooked for two children she will not see until long after dark, packed lunch for herself and her husband Amin, and begun the walk toward Adamjee EPZ. She is thirty years old. She works in quality control at a garment factory — a promotion earned through years at the sewing machine. She still thinks like a sewing operator, even now that she works in QC.
Amin works in the dyeing section of the same industry. They met on the factory floor, fell in love between shifts, and built a life on salaries that arrive on the 15th and are gone by the 5th.
Her father sells chotpoti in Mymensingh. Her mother watches the children in Sanarpar while they are gone. Together, Jomila and Amin are part of a workforce that powers over $39 billion in annual garment exports — more than 80 per cent of Bangladesh’s total export earnings — carried by 4.2 million workers, 80 per cent of them women, most of whom have no credit history, no bank relationship, and no financial product designed around how they actually earn.
Not because they are not creditworthy. Because no system was ever designed to measure them.
That changed the moment Jomila pressed 3 and 4 on the Wagely app.
Earned wage access — drawing down a portion of salary already earned before the official payday — is not a loan. It is her own money, available when she needs it. No paperwork. No collateral. No mahajan. Within days, the mid-month crisis that her father’s chotpoti earnings could never solve from Mymensingh became manageable. A digital transaction history began to form. That history changed everything.
Through a fintech-bank partnership, she bought a television and a refrigerator on BNPL — structured instalments deducted directly from her salary through a payroll integration between the fintech, the bank, and her factory’s HR. Amin applied for a digital credit card through an app. It took minutes. No branch visit. No guarantor. His first formal credit instrument arrived on his phone.
They began saving in small amounts. They enrolled in a contributory insurance scheme — the employer deposits ten taka per worker per day, the worker matches it. Amin contributes 500 taka a month toward an education plan for their children. He never wants them to drop from school.
Jomila did not change. The system changed around her.
As of 2024, around 70 per cent of garment workers already use mobile financial services — yet engagement remains limited almost entirely to basic withdrawals and transfers. The gap is not access. It is product design.
The Sarathi project by Swisscontact and MetLife Foundation increased average monthly savings per worker by 318 per cent within a year simply by connecting workers to appropriately designed products. bKash’s nano-loan programme has disbursed over Tk 2,800 crore across millions of transactions with repayment rates above 96 per cent. The evidence is not ambiguous. This segment repays.
Now compare that to what Bangladesh’s banks built while ignoring Jomila entirely.
According to the Asian Development Bank, Bangladesh now has the highest non-performing loan ratio in Asia. By September 2025, 23 banks faced a combined capital shortfall of Tk 2.82 lakh crore. The source of this catastrophe is not Jomila’s television or Amin’s education plan. It is concentrated, politically connected, large corporate lending — the customers Bangladesh’s banks chose while designing the system for a minority and leaving the majority outside it.
Five credit bureaus have received NoCs for operating licences. The National Payment Switch Bangladesh is gaining momentum. Bangladesh Bank’s simplified eKYC has removed the documentation barrier that kept millions invisible. The infrastructure is operational. What remains is the decision to use it.
For Islamic financial institutions, this is not just an opportunity. It is an obligation. Bangladesh is 90 per cent Muslim. A financial system built on transparency, participation, and ethical governance already holds the moral architecture that conventional banks are desperately trying to rebuild. Murabaha instalments for a refrigerator. Micro-Takaful for a factory worker.
Wadiah savings calibrated to a monthly salary cycle. These are not complex innovations. They are straightforward applications of existing frameworks to a customer who has been waiting for decades. The competitive advantage already exists. It only needs the will.
A financial architecture designed for the few, extracting value from the many while offering nothing in return, is not sustainable. It is an illusion. And history has never once let an illusion outlast the people it ignored.
Jomila is still walking to Adamjee EPZ every morning. She has never defaulted on anything the system asked of her. She just needed someone to ask.
Her children will go to school — 500 taka at a time, building quietly toward a future Amin refused to leave to chance.
That is what financial inclusion looks like when it works. Not policy. Not theory. A system that finally sees the people who were always there.
The author is a Digital Banking and Fintech Strategist working at the intersection of financial inclusion, platform economics, and digital transformation in Bangladesh, and author of From Cash to Code. Views expressed in the article are solely those of the author.
