Internet-based financial services, including online banking and mobile financial services, collapsed as internet services were suddenly shut down on Thursday.
Association of Bankers Bangladesh chairman and managing director of BRAC Bank Selim RF Hussain said that all the banks in Bangladesh had digital banking services and all kinds of internet-based banking services, application based banking in particular, suffered disruption in the internet shutdown.
However, ATM booths and branches of many banks that are connected with point to point data line would operate as usual.
He, however, said that services through the ATM booths were faltering as road blockades hampered regular cash reloading of the booths.
Tanvir Hasan, a resident of Dhaka鈥檚 Mirpur, said that he went to Dutch-Bangla Bank鈥檚 fast track point on Shaheed Kamal Sarani on Friday to withdraw cash to buy essentials, but he found the booth ran out of cash.
鈥業 usually do my essential shopping on Friday withdrawing cash from an ATM booth, which I couldn鈥檛 do today,鈥� he said.聽
An official of Bangladesh Bank said that most of the ATM network would face disruption in services due to the absence of internet connection. But receiving of remittance would not be hampered, the official noted.
He could not, however, estimate the total amount in transactions halted caused by the snap in internet connectivity.聽
Mutual Trust Bank managing director and chief executive officer Syed Mahbubur Rahman said that they could not carry out internet-based banking services.
鈥榃e are in dark after internet shutdown,鈥� he said.
The bank, however, was able to continue the LC (letter of credit) related work for foreign purchase, he said.
Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturer and Exporters Association vice-president Fazle Shamim Ehsan said that businesses were facing troubles as correspondence with buyers came to a nearly halt.
He said that the death of students also created an image crisis for the country abroad, causing buyers鈥� disappointment.
鈥榃e cannot respond to our buyers through email. They might place orders to other producers,鈥� he said, adding that this disconnection might result in growing mistrust as well.
Shamsuddin Haider Dalim, head of corporate communication of mobile financing service bKash, while saying that financial transactions through the service provider was certainly impacted, could not specify any amount in this regard.聽
He told 抖阴精品 that over 50 per cent of bKash customers still used the 鈥楿SSD system鈥� utilising a digitised code *247# through mobile phone network, which would not be affected by the internet shutdown, but those utilising the bKash app requiring internet connection were facing the problem.
Currently, bKash conducts on average 1.20 crore transactions daily.
E-commerce Association of Bangladesh finance secretary Asif Ahnaf said that e-commerce businesses were forced to close their operations with the internet shutdown as they entirely depended on net connectivity.
He said that on an average eight lakh orders were placed on e-commerce platforms daily worth Tk 100 crore. The platforms provided job to over 50,000 people, mostly commission-based deliverymen, who would be jobless as long as the internet connection is not restored.
He said that customers would also suffer by the situation as many of them bought essential drugs, daily goods and baby foods from e-commerce platforms.