Page 6 - Eurogiro News-sept_2011_web

6 Eurogiro News

Bangladesh Post announced as Eurogiro member at Asia Pacifc Postal Union meeting

With over 9,800 branches, Bangladesh Post has one of the largest physical networks in the country of Bangladesh. The implemen-tation for Eurogiro cross-border payments and remittances at the Post will directly link to Bangladesh Post’s domestic payments system - Electronic Money Transfer Ser-vice (EMTS) for cash payout at its linked branches. With an innovative approach to financial services, EMTS is now directly linked to over 1,750 branches, and in the month of May 2011 provided over 235,000 domestic transactions. Future plans at Bangladesh Post include linking the Eurogiro international payments service with more branches and with Bangladesh Post’s Cash Card and Mobile Wallet account.

Bangladesh Post’s entry into the Eurogiro community was announced at the Postal Financial Services committee meeting of the recent Asia Pacific Postal Union Executive Council meeting held in Ulaan Baatar, Mongo-lia in late July. Mr Sunil Kanti Bose, Secre-

tary, Head of Delegation, Ministry of Post & Telecommunications noted that Bangladesh Post has seen rapid modernisation efforts in recent years thanks to “Digital Bangladesh” – a government commitment to bring about a total digitalisation of Bangladesh by the year 2021. He also noted the agreement signed with Eurogiro for international remit-tances; the Eurogiro system will connect with Bangladesh Post’s EMTS. In conversa-tion with Ms Juanita Woodward, Director, Eurogiro, the Director General of Bangladesh Post, Mr Mobasherur Rahman explained, “The software was developed to mitigate the digital divide of both urban and rural areas. The Post developed it in-house so that costs could be kept to a minimum for the all users”.

Ms Juanita Woodward also made a presen-tation at the APPU Postal Financial commit-tee meeting. Aside from the Bangladesh Post announcement, there was a great deal of in-terest expressed at this meeting on the UPU-Eurogiro agreement. For Eurogiro members,

the agreement provides a bridge between the two systems. Whilst maintaining the many advantages of the Eurogiro system, such as automated financial settlement, a multilateral framework agreement, access to exchange payments with non-post such as banks and other financial services providers, Eurogiro members can soon send and receive cash-to-cash payments with UPU IFS users.

The attendees at the committee meeting were impressed by a video of Eurogiro’s partner, Ganart Technologies showing ability to create a user profile in under one minute’s time for international payments using a self-service kiosk. The video demonstrated the ease and convenience of the system as the kiosk can scan official ID documentation and auto-entry into the User’s profile, as well as take a photo, and use biometric security. 3

At the recent APPU meeting in July 2011 Bangladesh Post was welcomed as the newest member within the Eurogiro community. The Post represents a strategic corridor for inbound payments to Bangladesh; a country ranked # 6 globally by the World Bank for the high number of remittance payments

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Vietnam Post strengthening its co-operation with partners via the Eurogiro network

The aim in the coming years is to raise the volume of transactions via the Vietnam Post offces around the country thanks to the support of Eurogiro, as well as that of our partners, who will play an important role in our success

Vietnam Post joined Eurogiro in 2009, and went into production in September of the same year in 1,282 post offices. Vietnam Post has signed contracts for initialising transactions with 6 partners: Japan Post Bank, Swiss Post, Thailand Post, Poland Post, Bangkok Bank and PhilPost, with Japan Post representing the lion’s share of transactions

Recently, Vietnam Post has experienced a change to its organisational structure, ser-

vices and systems in order to raise revenue, especially in the area of postal financial services. On 1 July 2011, Vietnam Post and LienViet Joint Stock Commercial Bank (LienVietBank) signed a capital contribution contract and the Bank has been renamed LienViet Post Bank. Vietnam Post plans to co-operate with LienViet Post Bank to provide postal financial services, as well as banking services at post office branches.

Future plans include access to accounts, [email protected]

to the local clearing system, and the ability to receive and send credit transactions. Additionally, Vietnam Post has plans to expand its international payments service to VND and USD for outbound payments; this will require central bank approval and dis-cussion with the central bank is ongoing. 3