BB gives greenlight for launching PayPal in country

The Bangladesh Bank on Wednesday issued a circular allowing commercial banks to introduce direct cross-border payment services like PayPal and Payoneer for general people.

The authorised dealer banks will partner with the overseas fintech companies for launching their services. Before entering into partnerships, the banks will have to get prior approval from the central bank detailing their cybersecurity measures, tech infrastructure and compliance protocols.

Payoneer was already operational in Bangladesh, and PayPal’s Xoom services are available at limited scale for inbound remittance recipients.

But, the new circular would set up a comprehensive regulatory framework for launching all the cross-border digital payment service providers (CDPSPs), with their complete range of services, inside the country.

Each client would be assigned a digital value account (DVA) with his or her preferred authorised dealer bank. All the DVAs under a single bank will be managed by a parent Master DVA to ensure security and regulatory oversight.

To strengthen transparency and compliance, banks will be required to monitor all transactions in real time through their own systems and maintain a parallel ledger of all DVA transactions.