Bangladesh Bank has identified 7,900 suspicious accounts of leading mobile financial services (MFS) provider bKash and sought an explanation from the company over irregularities in customer information and account verification.

According to central bank sources, the accounts remain active and continue to conduct regular transactions. In some cases, account holders’ ages have been recorded at more than 1,800 years, raising questions about the authenticity of their identities and account ownership.

The irregularities were detected during an inspection by the central bank’s Payment Systems Supervision Department. The inspection found that the Know Your Customer (KYC) documents of the account holders could not be properly verified.

Bangladesh Bank observed that the findings potentially violate the Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit’s (BFIU) KYC guidelines and provisions of the Bangladesh Mobile Financial Services Regulations, 2022.

On November 3, the central bank issued a show-cause notice to bKash under Section 41(1) of the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2024, asking why a financial penalty should not be imposed on the company. Under Section 37(5) of the same law, the maximum fine for such violations is Tk30 lakh.

Under existing regulations, MFS providers are responsible for verifying customers’ identities, KYC documents and Customer Due Diligence (CDD) when opening accounts. The responsibility is also outlined in Section 5.2 of the BFIU’s e-KYC guidelines issued through Circular No. 25/2020.

Meanwhile, the country’s gambling laws prescribe penalties for operating gambling and betting activities using fake SIM cards, fraudulent MFS accounts or other people’s identities. Such offences can carry up to seven years in prison or a fine of up to Tk5 crore. However, no information has emerged indicating that the suspicious bKash accounts were used for gambling or betting.

bKash Head of Corporate Communications Shamsuddin Haider Dalim, however, denied that the identified accounts were fraudulent.

He said all bKash accounts are opened following regulatory guidelines through proper customer due diligence procedures, using both electronic KYC (e-KYC) and paper-based KYC processes. Customer identities are verified by matching biometric information with National Identity Card (NID) data stored in the Election Commission’s database.

He explained that bKash uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology to collect information from NID cards during e-KYC registration and facial recognition technology to verify customers’ identities. Any errors in the NID database are therefore reflected in the account information, he added.

According to Dalim, many accounts showing customers aged 100 years or older contain incorrect dates of birth in the corresponding NID records. The affected customers have been asked to correct their birth dates in the Election Commission’s database and inform bKash so that their KYC information can be updated.

He also acknowledged that some birth years were incorrectly entered manually while processing paper-based KYC forms. Those unintentional errors have already been corrected, he said.

Dalim further said all the accounts under scrutiny had been brought under Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD) procedures and necessary measures had been taken to reduce potential risks.

Bangladesh Bank Executive Director and spokesperson Arif Hossain Khan said the central bank had sought an explanation from bKash and would review the company’s response.