It was Purnima Mandal’s well planned decision to start a business to support her husband and opened a mobile recharge point adjacent to the under construction coal-fired power station at Rampal Upazila of Bagerhat district where she also start offering the digital transactions with Nagad, soon after the MFS carrier launched in March, 2019.

Purnima, mother of 8 years old kid, positioned herself as a change maker of the Babur Bari area,next to the world’s largest mangrove forest Sundarbans,and also playing a tremendous role by popularizing the digital transactions through Nagad, the disrupter of this field.

When the coal-fired power station starts developing huge number of workers and employees came here and they need to send money to their family every month. There are also huge number of fishermen and farmers lived in this part of the country who use to send their products to the cities and get the payment through Nagad.
Purnima, the 29 years old enthusiastic lady, helps to popularizing the Nagad’s digital transaction facilities as it offers the cheapest rate for cash-out charge and free send money facilities, she said. To run her business Purnima also choose to challenge the existing situation.

“Paying utility bills is charge free to Nagad which also a popular service in my outlets,” Purnima, who has completed the higher secondary certificate level with commerce discipline was enthusiastic to develop her own business carrier. “With the business it also quite satisfactory that I am helping the marginalized citizens to access digital service.”

Currently Purnima is transacting more than Tk 25 lakh a month only through Nagad platform which also helping her and her neighborhood by cashing-out the social safety net allowances, stimulus funds among the poultry farmers who have been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic. Mothers of the primary level students also visit Purnima to cash their stipend amount which the government has distributed through Nagad to 1.4 crore students.

Like Purnima there are about hundred retailors of Nagad across the country and most of them get huge business every month and changed their life.

“Initially I was little bit nervous thought what people with think about me, but immediately when my business starts growing with the help of Nagad I became confident on it and sometimes I also feel proud on my own job also.” Purnima added. “I want to thank Nagad that help me to earn the honor and also help me to change my neighborhood.”

Less than its two years’ journey Nagad, the state owned venture, also become the fastest growing digital financial platform in Bangladesh, has been successful in progressing thousands of ‘citizen lives’ to the more efficient digital lifestyle. It also empowers huge number of women of the country in different form.
“Our focus is to ensure convenient digital transaction facilities across the country for all community of the people and we are specially taking care of the lagging behind community,” said Tanvir A Mishuk, Managing Director of Nagad, a state owned mobile financial service carrier, offering amenities in partnership with the Bangladesh Post Office. “While empowerment of the women is also one of our top priority.”

Mishuk also added, “To promote the digital business and ensuring convenient digital life, especially for the women, we are also offering attractive facilities for both the buyer and the seller and our entrepreneurs.”

Nagad already got 30 million happy customers whom are transacting more than Tk 300 crore a day, a huge volume for the two years old company.

Easy account opening

According to Purnima, customer onboarding is a very easy at Nagad, as any interested person simply needs to dial *167# from their mobile phone to open an account, which she thinks help the users to obtain the service easily.

“People now can easily open their account by dallying *167# and that helps to boost transactions,” she added.

Currently using on average every day 1.80 lakh customers are onboarding Nagad dialing *167#, a state of the art innovation that helps to increase the financial inclusion across the country.

Cash-in without disclosing the number

With the easy cash-in process through banks and VISA or Master card Nagad, the digital financial service arm of Bangladesh Post Office also has introduced an inbuilt virtual card which ensure the facility to get all the serviceseven hiding the mobile number. Every Nagad app user will get the virtual card, a 16 digit unique number, and using that number anyone can do all their activity, which will protect the women from the virtual harassments.