Remittance deposits direct to bank account

For the first time in Bangladesh, Bank Asia and Western Union introduced Direct-to-Bank (D2B) money transfer service to help expatriates send remittance to any bank account connected to BEFTN (Bangladesh Electronic Fund Transfer Network). Previously, Western Union money was transferred through cash-to-cash modality where both sender and receiver could only send and receive foreign remittance in hard cash.

The D2B money transfer service was launched at a function held in a hotel in the capital city Dhaka on Thursday where Western Union’s Regional Vice President for South Asia Mr. Kiran Shetty, Deputy Governor of Bangladesh Bank (BB) Ms. Nazneen Sultana, Executive Director of Bangladesh Bank Mr. Md Ahsan Ullah, Vice Chairman of Bank Asia Mr. A.M. Nurul Islam, Chairman of the Executive Committee of Bank Asia Mr. Rumee A Hossain, President & Managing Director Mr. Md Mehmood Husain, Country Director of Western Union Bangladesh Liaison Office Mr. Vijayraj Poduval and Head of Foreign Remittance Department Syed Nazimuddin, among others, were present.

Initially, this service will be available from Malaysia and expatriate Bangladeshis will be able to send money to beneficiary accounts in around 9000 branches of all banks in Bangladesh. This gradually expending service will be soon available in UK & UAE, and later to 200 countries around the globe, where Western Union has more than 500,000 locations.

It is mentioned that Bank Asia made 101,328 transactions of Tk.318.14 crore in 2012 and 100,483 transactions of Tk.293.34 crore in 2013. It is expected that the number of transaction will increase significantly with the introduction of D2B service.