Amazon, one of the world’s most influential tech giants recently acquired Business Identification Number (BIN) from the National Board of Revenue (NBR) in Bangladesh.
Around the same time, Google obtained BIN as well. This is the first-time non-residential companies registered for BIN in this country.
This news was met with a lot of excitement, especially when people thought Amazon was bringing their e-commerce services. Much to their dismay, no such thing is happening. The move was just to ensure business continuity of their AWS (Amazon Web Services).
AWS is a secure cloud services platform of Amazon offering multiple services including compute power, data processing. It is trusted by many firms, as it saves their time, money and potential. The use of AWS is not only limited to firms, people using subscriptions of google drive and google cloud also use this.
Amazon and other tech giants earn around Tk3000 crore in Bangladesh from these services of AWS. Until now, payment for this by Bangladeshi customers used to be done by international credit cards.
However, there are allegations that many use illegal channels for this, which is not compliant with NBR regulations.
Getting BIN means, now the payment of the services can be done by cards of any Bangladeshi bank or Mobile Bank, without any need of currency exchange. However, with every payment 15% VAT will be charged and the money from the VAT will go to the government reserve.
Upon asking on whether this move will change the way in which Amazon works in Bangladesh, the VAT online project director said “Amazon will continue in the same way as before, but the process will now be compliant with regulations “
According to industry experts, in the near future Amazon doesn’t have any plans of bringing their e-commerce services to Bangladesh. The registration was done to ensure business continuity of their AWS.
