10% of MFS users fall victim to fraud: Survey

One in 10 mobile financial service (MFS) users in Bangladesh face fraud, according to a recent survey.

The survey findings were published in the report titled “The state of DFS consumer protection in Bangladesh.”

The survey was conducted by the Policy Research Institute of Bangladesh (PRI) and funded by Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom.

It conducted consumer and agent surveys undertaken across 45 districts of the country covering 9,279 adults, drawn from over 300 upazilas using two stratification points — urban and rural.

The victim ratio of MFS frauds is almost equal between rural-urban, and male-female, the report said.

The fraud ratio is relatively higher for users with higher educational degrees; this may imply that well-educated users can better recognize fraudulent activities in their MFS accounts.

The share of victims from Sylhet division is the highest (30%). Mymensingh holds the lowest percentage of victims (6%), followed by Dhaka (6%), Barishal (6%), and others.

The average size of maximum financial loss from MFS fraud is Tk 9,219 with a maximum of Tk 25,000.

The survey further found that approximately 45 percent of the respondents in the survey stated that they do not use MFS.

Among them, nearly 66 percent identified “not needed” as the primary reason for not using MFS. Other reasons include fear of fraud, being expensive, and difficulty to use.