The real bank now lives in your pocket

Let me tell you about two people.

The first is a farmer in Gazipur who has never entered a bank. He uses bKash to send money, receive payments, and save. No training, no manual, it simply works.

The second is a corporate executive in Gulshan, tech-savvy, with multiple accounts and three credit cards. Last week, he spent forty minutes and made three calls as he tried to make a wire transfer through his bank app, and still had to visit a branch for a physical signature.

There lies Bangladesh's paradox. The country handles 8.61 percent of the world's daily mobile money transactions, with 238 million accounts, or 11 percent of the global total. Yet the same farmer who smoothly uses bKash would be lost in a bank app, while the executive is one bad experience away from switching to a fintech company.

We have built highways for bicycles while others are launching rockets.

Walk into any bank boardroom and say the words customer experience. You will hear about an upgraded app with a modern interface and faster performance, followed by a long feature list. However, user experience is not about features; it is about how a customer feels.

Global leaders such as Monzo and Revolut process insights, not only transactions. They turned notifications into conversations and apps into advisors. Meanwhile, many local banks still require physical signatures to change a mobile number.

bKash and Nagad have already proved what world-class design looks like. When a rickshaw puller conducts transactions as naturally as making a phone call, that is true digital inclusion. Yet most banking apps remain sterile and transactional. Customers feel like account number 000245789, not like Nasrin, who is saving for her daughter's education.

The deeper issue is the leadership mindset. Many ICT heads are still building time capsule solutions where innovation dies under security concerns and compliance requirements. However, the same regulations do not stop bKash or Nagad from onboarding users in minutes with digital KYC and biometrics. Banks, in contrast, still demand multiple forms, signatures and weeks of processing.

A few institutions, including BRAC, City, EBL and Prime, are improving, but even their apps stop short of being transformative.

Real experience means intelligence with empathy. For a corporate banker, the app should prioritise quick transfers. For a homemaker, reminders and goal nudges should come first. Imagine asking your app, "Can I afford dinner this weekend?" It replies, "You have Tk 23,500. Rent and bills are due soon. Three restaurants under Tk 3,000 fit your budget."

That is not science fiction. It is simply data, analytics and conversational AI. If AI can detect fraud, why can it not prevent poor financial decisions?

Adding more features is not a transformation. The real vision is a super app, a platform where banking, payments, savings and trusted services converge. Imagine paying your doctor, booking travel or shopping securely within one ecosystem backed by your bank.

With digital banking licences on the horizon, banks face a choice: evolve into platforms or fade behind fintechs.

The tools already exist. What is missing is the courage to design for humans, not policies, to innovate within compliance, not hide behind it.

Build the app that helps me save, alerts me before I overspend and makes me forget I am banking at all.

When that rickshaw puller navigates your app as effortlessly as Facebook, you will finally understand what digital banking truly means. The real branch is already in your pocket.

The app is everything. And everything starts with empathy.

The writer is a digital banking and fintech strategist. He can be reached at [email protected]