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The Dhaka Fintech Revolution
How Bangladesh became the unexpected capital of mobile money
Rafiq Hasan
Tech Editor
3 September 20269 min read
With over 50 million bKash users and a wave of new apps targeting the unbanked, Bangladesh is quietly building one of the world's most innovative financial technology ecosystems.
It began with a mobile phone and a dream of inclusion.
When bKash launched in 2011, fewer than 15% of Bangladeshis had bank accounts. Today, more than 60 million people use mobile financial services — a transformation that rivals M-Pesa in Kenya as one of the great financial inclusion stories of the 21st century.
But bKash was just the beginning. A new wave of Bangladeshi fintech startups is building on this foundation, creating products that would not be out of place in Singapore or Stockholm.
ShajgoJ offers AI-powered micro-credit to small traders. OkWallet provides cross-border remittance tools used by the Bangladeshi diaspora in the UK, USA, and Middle East. FinovateBD uses blockchain to create tamper-proof land records, addressing one of the country's oldest property dispute challenges.
"The necessity here was extreme," says Imran Chowdhury, founder of ShajGoJ. "And extreme necessity produces extreme innovation."
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