Over the past decade, financial systems across the world have undergone a quiet revolution, replacing paper currency with digital rails. In Bangladesh, building a cashless economy remains a flagship goal for policy architects at Bangladesh Bank. The mandatory rollout of Bangla QR across eligible merchants undeniably solves one half of the equation—retail payments.

However, the other half—how ordinary citizens pay one another with minimal friction, whether for informal services, daily household chores, or personal obligations—remains largely unresolved. Technically, generating a personal QR code for each bank or MFS account under the Bangla QR framework is entirely feasible. The real hurdle is regulatory and operational. Until regulators adapt to enable seamless Person-to-Person (P2P) transfers via QR, Bangladesh’s cashless ambitions will remain stuck halfway.

One of these scribes faced the stark reality of this gap in New Delhi a few years ago. While trying to pay a taxi driver Rs 245 for a ride booked through an app, he found he had only a 400-Rupee note. “I don’t carry physical cash,” stated the driver, politely turning down the banknotes. “Just scan the QR code on the seat in front of you with whatever app you use. Any app works,” he pointed out.

Because the scribe lacked a local Indian payment app, he had no choice but to hand over the full Rs 400 and let the other party keep the change. Later that evening, he recounted the experience to his friend Pranab, a Delhi resident, asking how people manage daily life without physical cash. He opened his wallet to show a single, crumpled 500-Rupee note. His salary, rent, and daily grocery bills were all managed digitally on his smartphone. “Even my house help has her own QR code,” Pranab remarked. “I pay her straight into her account. Cash never changes hands,” he added.

That observation stayed with the scribe.

In Bangladesh, paying a domestic worker, a rickshaw puller, a local electrician, or a street vendor still happens almost exclusively in cash. The gap isn’t technological—Bangladesh has possessed QR technology for years. The real disconnect lies in the regulatory assumptions behind who that technology was built to serve.

While the national expansion of Bangla QR is a vital milestone toward interoperability, its regulatory framework remains heavily slanted toward formal merchant payments (P2M).

Here lies the critical policy gap: in Bangladesh, the informal economy accounts for over 80 per cent of total employment and more than 40 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP). The vast majority of cash velocity does not occur at air-conditioned superstores or registered retail chains. It happens when an urban worker withdraws paper currency from an ATM to pay house rent, buy vegetables from a street cart, pay a rickshaw fare, or remit money to ageing parents in rural villages.

Payments to registered businesses and transfers between individuals are two fundamentally different economic interactions. Bangladesh has focused heavily on the former, leaving P2P transactions bound to physical notes.

Bank-to-bank and MFS transfers indeed exist in Bangladesh. However, they remain far too cumbersome for the spontaneous, low-value transactions that define informal commerce:

Information Overload: Mobile banking transfers frequently require inputting bank names, specific branches, and account numbers running past ten digits. A single typographic error causes the transaction to fail.

Channel Complexity: Users are forced to navigate protocols like BEFTN (which settles the next business day without instant confirmation) or NPSB (which settles instantly but historically carries transaction fees).

While central bank regulators have progressively slashed fees and settlement times on the merchant side, the Person-to-Person layer that ordinary citizens need to pay one another has lacked equivalent regulatory prioritisation.

From a technological standpoint, extending Bangla QR to personal accounts is straightforward. The same interoperable rails that allow a consumer to scan a shopkeeper’s code can allow an employer to scan a domestic worker’s personal QR code.

To translate this technical capability into reality, regulators and policy architects must address three core priorities:

1. Extend Bangla QR Architecture to Individual Accounts: Bangladesh Bank should formally enable personal, non-merchant QR codes under the unified Bangla QR standard. This would allow domestic workers, delivery riders, and informal micro-vendors without formal trade licenses to display a single, interoperable QR code linked directly to their primary bank or MFS account.
2. Establish a Dedicated ‘Micro-P2P’ Regulatory Category: To prevent tax friction and unnecessary merchant fees from penalising low-income users, regulators must establish a separate regulatory classification for personal and micro-retail transfers, distinct from commercial merchant accounts.
3. Simplify Identifier Resolution: Account identifiers should be mapped seamlessly to universal mobile numbers or national identity handles, eliminating the need to input multi-digit account and branch numbers during P2P transfers.

A cashless retail sector is not synonymous with a cashless economy. Until the taka moving from one citizen’s pocket to another’s—without a formal receipt, trade license, or merchant account—can flow as effortlessly as a retail payment, Bangladesh’s cashless ambitions will remain restricted to affluent urban pockets.

By extending Bangla QR to personal accounts and fixing the regulatory framework around P2P transfers, policy formulators can finally bring every economic agent—from corporate boardrooms to street-side vendors—into a truly inclusive, cashless ecosystem.

Md Rashel Hasan, Banker & Researcher; Raju Ahmed, CDFP & Banker; [email protected]