Socioeconomic Challenges of Electronic Banking Practices in Bangladesh

In Bangladesh, banking industry is mature now to a great extent than earlier period. Electronic banking is one of the most demanded and latest technologies in banking sector. Despite huge demand from the business community as well as the retail customers particularly the urban customers, online banking in Bangladesh is still at a budding state due mainly to a number of constraints such as inadequacy of reliable and secure information infrastructure especially telecommunication infrastructure; sluggish ICT penetration in banking sector, insufficient legal and regulatory support and so on. In Bangladesh, telephone connectivity is inadequate, cost of personal computers are still beyond purchasing capacity of most people, Internet connection is costly, and IT literacy is yet to reach satisfactory level are prime drawbacks. Despite the constraints, efforts by the Bangladesh Bank in modernizing the country's payment system and commitment by the government in building ‘Digital Bangladesh’ have brought competition among the scheduled banks to improve banking services and rapidly adopt online banking on a wider scale.