E-commerce merchants to get paid after confirming product delivery

E-commerce merchants will have to send customer details to payment service providers after delivering a product for the release of the money.

The Bangladesh Bank gave payment instructions through a circular on Wednesday introducing a provision of penalty for digital commerce merchants for providing wrong information about product delivery.  

The circular will come into effect immediately. 

According to the circular, payment gateways -- banks, mobile financial service providers, payment service provider and payment system operators -- will release customer money after being confirmed of the product delivery.

If any merchant is found to have provided false information to the payment service providers, it will lose eligibility to get all kinds of payments in the next time. 

In case of voucher issuance by e-commerce merchants, payment will not be released until a customer buys a product or takes any service. 

Merchants will not use the proceeds of sales in other purposes except meeting their own liabilities. Moreover, merchants will have to maintain the same amount of liabilities in their account with payment service providers.

However, payment settlement for digital merchants delivering food, grocery and medicine and helping with ride-sharing mobile recharge, paying education fee, hotel booking and ticket booking will continue as usual.

In this case, delivery will be within five days. The merchants having own production units and showrooms will continue with the current payment settlement method, but the product delivery must be within seven days, according to the circular.  

The Bangladesh Bank issued the circular to protect customer interests and retain customer confidence in the fast-growing industry. 

It said that in many cases e-commerce merchants were failing to deliver products to customers even after receiving payments in advance, and the failure diminished customers' faith in e-commerce and digital platforms.