Summary: 

With the instruction of the commerce ministry and Bangladesh Bank, some banks have already withdrawn the direct payment facilities into the bank account of E-commerce companies from their customers to abide by the guidelines of escrow service.

Content: 

Since e-commerce had started in Bangladesh, the process of advance payment from customers also had been started. Some dishonest companies had abused this process by defrauding the customers. Till now, a large number o customers have been deceived by various e-commerce companies including Evaly, E-orange, Dhamaka, etc after paying prices in advance.

With the recent event of Evaly tragedy, the government urged to take steps against them and all the other E-commerce platforms. To curb such frauds and protect the interests of the consumers, they have issued guidelines to manage the platform of digital commerce. This guideline involves escrow service. Bangladesh bank has issued a circular to launch the escrow service on 30 June.

The escrow service involves the payment gateways to protect the payment from the customers. After delivering the products to the buyers, the E-commerce companies can then take the payments from the payment gateways after submission and inspection of the documents by them.

Hafizur Rahman, additional secretary and head of the Central Digital Commerce Cell has criticized the previous direct payment method. He said, ‘Taking money in this way is against the instructions of the Bangladesh Bank and the Ministry of Commerce and there is a risk of deceiving the customers. Against such a backdrop, the commerce ministry has issued the letter to the central bank urging it to instruct banks not to deposit money directly into the companies’ bank accounts.’

Source:  The Financial Express