Emerging threats in Mobile Financing Services (MFS). an observational study on Anti Money Laundering (AML) Department, bKash

Abstract

bKash is one of the leading MFS company in the extremely competitive mobile financial service industry in Bangladesh. Though bKash started journey in this sector & enjoyed first mover advantage for a long period of time, the industry is getting competitive due to massive entrance of different companies. It is a great opportunity for interns to work under supervision & direction of bKash management team. The experience that is gained directly and indirectly and the office environment will surely give the interns a competitive edge in future when they will work in other companies. The main task of the intern was to fulfill the daily targets give by the supervisor on verifying KYC of personal and merchant account through NID card & driving license. This was mainly done to filter out the faulty KYCs who have provided misleading information & those may misuse the bKash platform in future for their illegal activities. As the mobile financing service industry is expanding rapidly after the pandemic, so does the activity of the terrorist parties through this platform is also increasing. To overcome this risks bKash needs to follow a set of compliance provided by the Bangladesh Bank & Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit which are mostly executed by the Anti Money laundering & Combatting the Financing of terrorism department (AML & CFT) of bKash. The AML & CFT department have different teams who are working tirelessly to stop the fraudulent activities which are carried out through bKash. bKash has divided the whole Bangladesh into different zones based on the level of risk & number of transactions. Each Regional Anti Money laundering & Compliance Officer (RAMLCO) is assigned for each zone and the AML & CFT department takes the monthly reports and centrally controls their actions. After the pandemic, different new threats emerged into this industry due to sudden increase of the customers of different types. Therefore, it was necessary to ensure the maximum service with the lowest level of issues for bKash at such a challenging time. The analysis and the survey part of the report analyzed the customer perception about bKash. In addition to that it also measures the satisfaction level of the customers regarding the preventive actions taken by bKash against money laundering & terrorist financing. The working process of the teams of AML & CFT department have been described elaborately in the report. At the end of my report, I have come up with some of my recommendations which seemed to be necessary in my perception for making the customer experience smoother for bKash.