We carry money
Acceptance a shopkeeper can actually use, set up once for every provider through Bangla QR — then the savings, remittance, insurance and bill payments that follow through the door trust opened.
Bangladesh's last mile
Three million shops still can't take a digital taka.
Not because the technology is missing — bKash, Nagad, Rocket and Bangla QR all work. Because nobody walked down that lane, sat on that plastic stool, explained it in the shopkeeper's language, and stayed long enough to be trusted.
Priyo Agent is that walk.
আপনার পাশেই, আপনার প্রিয় এজেন্ট
A shop like this one is 41.8% of every economic unit in Bangladesh — the single largest category in the census.
- small shops in Bangladesh
4.5m
- of them cannot accept a digital taka
~3m
- of mobile money is someone paying a shop
5%
- of transaction value is still not digital
65%
Every figure on this site is sourced, and anything we worked out ourselves is labelled an estimate. The full arithmetic is here.
The coverage gap
~3m
shops with no way to accept a digital payment.
Bangladesh has around 4.5 million small shops. Bangladesh Bank recorded 1.54 million MFS merchant accounts — and those count accounts, not shops, so a shop on two wallets is counted twice.
This is not a segment of our market. It is the majority of it.
1.0–1.5 million shops can take a digital payment. Bangladesh Bank records 1.54m merchant accounts, but those are accounts rather than shops — a shop on both bKash and Nagad is counted twice.
Around 3 million shops cannot. Roughly two in every three. Each dot here is 100,000 shops.
The real problem is not that Bangladesh lacks wallets. It is that Bangladesh lacks tills. A wallet with nowhere to spend is just a slower way to fetch cash.
~3m
of them cannot accept a digital taka
Shop count less the merchant accounts on record — and those accounts are duplicated across providers, so the true gap is likely wider.
Our estimateBangladesh Bank
5%
of mobile money is someone paying a shop
Tk 86bn of merchant payments a month against Tk 1.72tn of total MFS volume. It was 4.36% in 2021.
early 2025 ·Bangladesh Bank
65%
of transaction value is still not digital
Digital reached Tk 9.23 lakh crore — 34.6% — and about a fifth of that was RTGS, not shop tills.
Oct 2025 ·New Age
Cash-out has outrun acceptance
Bangladesh has 1.83 million MFS agents and 1.54 million merchant accounts. We taught a whole country how to turn digital money back into paper. We never taught the paper to stay digital. Of roughly 237 million MFS accounts, only 37.6% are active.
What we do
A trust network disguised as a payments network.
We recruit, train and support local people — many of them women — to be the financial front door for the shops in their own neighbourhood. Not a sales visit. A standing relationship.
- 1
Show up in person, in Bangla, without jargon
Sit down. Buy a cup of tea. Explain what a digital taka is and where it goes. No lanyard, no script, no sales visit.
- 2
Onboard properly, once, for everyone
Bangla QR plus the wallets their customers already carry — so a single setup works across every provider instead of stacking one brand's sticker on another's.
- 3
Stay
The failed transaction, the forgotten PIN, the settlement question, the reconciliation confusion. Activation is our metric, not acquisition. We are paid on live transactions, not signatures.
- 4
Turn their history into an asset
A cash-only shop is invisible: no record, no credit score, no working capital. Every month of transactions is collateral a shopkeeper never had before.
- 5
Bring the rest of the system with us
Savings, remittance, insurance, utility bills, government payments — through the door that trust opened.
One network, two jobs
The distribution channel and the social channel are the same channel.
Most companies bolt social work onto a business. Ours runs on the same wiring — because in a market where the barrier is trust rather than technology, being visibly useful to a community is a distribution strategy.
We carry help
Women's education, food for families having a bad month, and flood relief — delivered through the same agents and the same shops, because they are already there and already trusted.
The agent who brought relief to that lane in September is the agent whose payment product the shopkeeper adopts in October. Nothing else buys that.
Why now
The window is open, and it has a deadline on it.
A national target that only shops can deliver
Bangladesh Bank wants 75% of transactions cashless by 2027 and 80% of payments digital within the decade. Against 34.6% digital in October 2025, that is unreachable through malls and supermarkets. It runs through the mudir dokan.
The Bangla QR mandate
Every bank, MFS provider, PSP and PSO must replace its proprietary QR codes at merchant points with the interoperable Bangla QR, with penalties up to Tk 30 lakh. Suddenly the whole industry needs merchants onboarded — and interoperability means one visit can serve all of them.
Acceptance is the bottleneck now
Wallet growth has plateaued into dormancy — of roughly 237 million MFS accounts, only 37.6% are active. The next decade of growth has to come off the 5% merchant-payment line.
The last mile is already proven
Agent banking runs 21,023 outlets through 15,838 agents serving 24.67 million accounts, 85.5% of them rural. Rural Bangladesh is not a distribution mystery. It just needs someone to show up.
The country we work in
The neighbourhood shop is not a niche in Bangladesh. It is the economy.
Four in ten economic units in this country are a shop. Nine in ten are micro or cottage scale. Almost two-thirds sit in a village.
- 11,702,792
- economic units in Bangladesh
- 41.8%
- of them are wholesale or retail trade
- 63%
- of economic units are rural
- 56.7%
- are micro enterprises
- 30.6m
- people work in them
- <1%
- of retail is organised or modern trade
Up 49.68% in a decade.
The single largest category — roughly 4.9 million units.
7,385,828 of 11,702,792.
A further 38.7% are cottage scale. Nine in ten are one of the two.
Persons engaged across all economic units.
In a food and grocery market worth around US$36 billion.
For MFS providers and banks
You built extraordinary rails. Let us carry them the last mile.
The remaining shops are not a technology problem. They are a presence problem, and presence does not scale from a head office.
bKashNagadRocketUpayBanksFunders
Named as the partners we want to work with. Priyo Agent is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of them.
Interoperable by default
One Bangla QR visit activates a merchant for the whole ecosystem, not one brand.
Paid on live transactions
Not on signatures — because dormancy is the industry's actual problem.
Data that creates borrowers
A newly visible merchant is a new CMSME customer against a US$2.8bn financing gap.
CSR that actually lands
An audited delivery channel for education, food and relief.
Straight answers
Questions we get asked first.
Where does the figure of three million shops come from?
It is our own arithmetic, and we label it that way everywhere. Bangladesh has roughly 4.5 million small retail shops; Bangladesh Bank recorded 1.54 million MFS merchant accounts across all providers in December 2024. Those are accounts rather than shops, so a shop accepting both bKash and Nagad is counted twice — meaning the number of uniquely enabled shops is realistically 1.0–1.5 million, and the uncovered remainder is around three million. It is an estimate, and a conservative one.
Aren't bKash and Nagad already doing this?
They have built extraordinary rails, and we are not trying to replace them — we want to carry them further. The remaining shops are not a technology problem, they are a presence problem, and presence does not scale from a head office. Because Bangla QR is interoperable, one visit from us can activate a merchant for every provider at once.
How is Priyo Agent paid?
On live transactions rather than signatures. That is deliberate: the industry's problem is dormant merchants, so a model paid on acquisition would reproduce exactly the failure we exist to fix.
Why run social programmes and a payments business together?
Because in a market where the barrier is trust rather than technology, being visibly useful to a community is a distribution strategy. The agent who brought relief to a lane in September is the agent whose payment product the shopkeeper adopts in October. And Bangladeshi banks already spend hundreds of crore on CSR that struggles to land — we are a channel for it.
Is Priyo Agent related to bKash's “Priyo Agent” feature?
No. bKash uses the same words for a customer's designated favourite cash-out agent. We are a separate organisation, not affiliated with or endorsed by bKash, and we say so plainly whenever it comes up.
For MFS providers and banks
Tell us which shops you need reached.
Whether you are an MFS provider with a merchant target, a bank with a Bangla QR deadline and a CSR budget, or a funder backing financial inclusion — start with a conversation.