Bangladesh Bank to roll out personal Bangla QR codes for informal workers in November

Rickshaw pullers, cobblers and everyday informal workers across Bangladesh will be able to receive and send money using personal Bangla QR codes starting in November, Bangladesh Bank Governor Md Mostakur Rahman announced on Saturday.

The rollout forms the fourth phase of the central bank's push to make retail payments fully interoperable. While merchant QR codes allow shops and institutions to accept payments, the upcoming phase introduces direct person-to-person transfers, letting ordinary citizens and micro-earners accept money directly onto their accounts without needing formal commercial accounts.

Speaking at a ceremony launching university tuition fee payments through the system at United International University, the governor explained that the central bank had deliberately phased the deployment to avoid system bottlenecks.

How the national rollout works

The central bank made Bangla QR mandatory from 1 July. The second stage involved stress-testing capacity across roughly 100 payment providers brought onto a single switch. The National Payment Switch Bangladesh has been tested to handle up to 300 transactions per second, while international partner networks like Mastercard can process up to 1,000 per second.

A public promotional drive began on 1 October. To encourage uptake among users and small vendors, the central bank waived all fees for interoperable transactions between different providers across all amounts, from Tk 2,000 to Tk 2 lakh.

Transaction numbers have already climbed sharply. Daily transaction volume on Bangla QR averaged Tk 37 crore during the first week of June, rising to about Tk 180 crore by the final week of September. Even with that fourfold rise, Rahman cautioned that the platform remains in its early stages, adding that the initiative would only reach meaningful adoption once daily volumes hit Tk 3,000 crore.

Commercial banks step up adoption

Commercial lenders have been updating their retail apps to match the central bank's timetable. Meghna Bank launched its own Bangla QR payment service through its MeghnaPay mobile wallet, allowing retail customers to scan any merchant QR code to pay from their smartphones. Meghna Bank managing director Syed Mizanur Rahman formally inaugurated the service at the lender's Dhaka head office.

Central bank officials link the QR push to a wider digital public infrastructure strategy built on three pillars: unified digital identity, digital payments and cross-institution data exchange. Rahman noted that discussions around the system had already drawn interest from multinational technology companies, including Google, Meta and Huawei.