Dhaka — Small and Medium Enterprises focused bank BRAC Bank has banned purchases through credit, debit and prepaid cards on 10 e-commerce platform including big e-commerce sites Evaly and Alesha Mart. Other companies on the ban list are E-Orange, Dhamaka Shopping, Sirajganj Shopping, Aladdin's Lamp, Boom Boom, Qcoom, Adian Mart, and Needs.com BD.
The bank did not divulge the specific reason for the ban stating that the bank board takes the strategic decision to determines the partnership with a different organisation. However, sources indicated that decision was taken due to negative media coverage of online shopping platforms that are embroiled in allegations of fraud raised by customers.
Ekramul Kabir, chief public relations officer of BRAC Bank, confirmed the matter on Tuesday. He told the media that this is a strategic decision of BRAC Bank. Our board of directors determines which partnership we will have. They have decided to suspend transactions on these sites for the time being.
Several e-commerce companies are adopting new business strategies. In this new business system, online markets collect a few months' advances from buyers. In some cases, companies take longer to deliver products.
In addition, they often inform buyers that the products they have ordered are out of stock. And so it is not possible to send it. However, after months of waiting, the companies failed to deliver the goods and there were numerous complaints that the buyers did not get their money back.
The Bangladesh Bank (BB) is also concerned about raising huge sums of money from e-commerce companies of the country by trapping all the lucrative discounts of online shoppers. Bangladesh Bank has recently sent an investigative report to the Ministry of Commerce (MoC) regarding high transactions through these unregulated e-commerce sites.
They noted that these companies do not have any assets against the advance money collected from the buyers.
According to an inspection by Bangladesh Bank, the current assets of the online-based commercial organization (e-commerce) Evaly is 65 crores 17 lakh taka. In contrast, the debt of the company stands at 403 crores 80 lakh taka. The company does not have the capacity to repay these debts more than 6 times its assets.
