Bringing cheers to online shoppers, the Bangladesh government has decided to withhold payments of local e-commerce platforms until confirmation of safe delivery of items, adding a layer of consumer protection to the transaction.

At present, the merchants' payment is cleared within moments of the customer making the transaction with bank cards or the mobile financial services platform.

Payment will be cleared only after confirmation by the customer, Hafizur Rahman, director-general of the WTO Cell under the commerce ministry, told The Daily Star over the phone.

"If the payment gateways can be controlled effectively, no e-commerce site can cheat or make an unusual delay in delivery of goods as the companies will also need to wait for the payment," he added.

The commerce ministry will send a letter to the Bangladesh Bank on Sunday to work out the logistics of the decision, including how the confirmation of receipt of items would come from the customers.

The development comes after a recent Bangladesh Bank inspection report on the e-commerce juggernaut Evaly that sounded off the alarm bells.

As of March 14, Evaly, which has assets worth Bangladesh Rs 65.2 crore, had delivery pending on goods worth Bangladesh Rs 213.9 crore and owed about Rs 189.9 crore to merchants from whom it bought products.

With its assets, Evaly can repay only one-third of its liabilities to customers.

The constant rise in liabilities puts the organization at the risk of collapsing, the report said, while raising concern on nine other e-commerce sites including Alesha Mart and Dhamaka Shopping.

This prompted Brac Bank, Bank Asia and Dhaka Bank to suspend the use of cards for making purchases on the 10 e-commerce sites.

City Bank, United Commercial Bank and LankaBangla Finance also notified their customers that they will not be held liable for any fraud while purchasing goods on the e-commerce sites using their cards.

The commerce ministry’s move can prove to be a hammer blow to the business model of Evaly, which is centered on taking payment from customers in advance.

However, Evaly welcomed the commerce ministry decision.

The new payment mechanism was a proposal to curb the anomalies by a section of the e-commerce platforms in the country, said its president Shomi Kaiser.

(SAM)