Bangladesh's neobanks,
by BB licence class.

Four BB licence classes,
three protection outcomes.

The Bangladeshi framework layers a chartered banking system on top of an unusually dominant mobile-money interface. Bangladesh Bank supervises Scheduled Banks (full commercial banks, conventional and Islamic), Specialised Banks (a narrower deposit-taking class), Mobile Financial Service providers (wallet operators that sit on top of commercial-bank parents), and a separate new Digital Bank class issued from 2023-2024. BDITF cover applies directly to Scheduled Banks; MFS providers carry cover indirectly via the parent commercial bank where customer trust funds are held. The wallet brand consumers know — bKash — sits on top of BRAC Bank, so the licence on the parent and the licence on the in-app product are not the same thing. The licence is the protection.

All 5, by licence + protection class.

Read the licence,
not the marketing.

Why bKash deposits ARE indirectly covered
but the depositor relationship is not direct.

The most consequential structural fact in Bangladeshi digital finance is the relationship between bKash and BRAC Bank. bKash is a BB-licensed Mobile Financial Service provider — the licence class is MFS, defined under BB's MFS Regulations, and is conceptually a wallet/payment-service class rather than a deposit-taking bank class. On its own, that licence would put bKash outside the deposit-insurance envelope, the same way SadaPay or NayaPay sit outside DPC in Pakistan or GCash sits outside PDIC in the Philippines. The Bangladeshi specificity is the corporate structure: bKash Limited is a subsidiary of BRAC Bank Limited, a full BB Scheduled Bank under the Bank Company Act 1991, and customer float in the bKash system is held in trust accounts at BRAC Bank's core-banking layer. BDITF cover applies to that trust position via BRAC Bank's Scheduled Bank licence at the BDT 200,000 per-depositor ceiling.

The user-facing complication is what kind of relationship the customer actually has. A bKash account-holder is not a direct BDITF-covered depositor at BRAC Bank in the sense that a BRAC Bank current-account holder is — the customer's contractual relationship is with bKash Limited, and bKash's relationship with BRAC Bank is the trust-account layer that holds the float. In a stress scenario the cover is real but it is intermediated, and the operational mechanics of how BDITF would treat a bKash trust position have not been tested at scale. Depositors who want a direct, unintermediated BDITF position should open a deposit account at BRAC Bank itself rather than relying solely on the bKash wallet, and depositors who want the bKash UX without the trust-account intermediation should watch the rollout of bKash Digital Bank — which, as a chartered Digital Bank licensee under BB's 2023-2024 framework, is expected to provide a direct depositor relationship with statutory BDITF cover. The rational pattern is the one that's true in every MFS-on-bank jurisdiction: wallet for daily transactional flow, chartered-bank deposit for balances above operational float, with the licence on the receiving entity understood before funding. Source: bb.org.bd; bkash.com; thedailystar.net.

How this ranking is built.

Each candidate is scored on licence class (BB Scheduled Bank vs Mobile Financial Service vs Digital Bank), BDITF membership status (direct vs indirect via parent), parent backing, DSE listing status where applicable, and product surface (chartered BDT savings vs MFS-anchored wallet vs digital-bank licensee). The ranking is editorial and explicitly excludes affiliate compensation as a ranking input — none of the structured rows on this page carry an affiliate relationship at the time of writing. Licence-status references and BDITF-membership statements were verified against the Bangladesh Bank licensee register at bb.org.bd, BDITF reference material on bb.org.bd / bdif.gov.bd, Dhaka Stock Exchange corporate disclosures at dsebd.org for DSE-listed banks (BRAC Bank, Eastern Bank, Dutch-Bangla Bank, City Bank, Bank Asia and others), each operator's public deposit-product page, and reporting from Reuters, The Daily Star, Prothom Alo, and The Financial Express on the dates noted in data_as_of. Where Bangladeshi statutory or supervisory changes shift the underlying numbers — a BB enforcement action, a BDITF ceiling revision, a Digital Bank licensee status change, or a corporate restructuring at the BRAC Bank, Dutch-Bangla, or Nagad level — the relevant prose calls it out and points readers at the BB / BDITF / DSE primary sources for current status. We do not reproduce BB-confidential supervisory ratings.

For BDITF-covered BDT, read the licence on the receiving entity.

For Taka-denominated savings where statutory cover is load-bearing, only BB-licensed Scheduled Banks (and, prospectively, fully operational Digital Bank licensees) sit inside the BDITF envelope at the BDT 200,000 ceiling on a direct-depositor basis. BRAC Bank is the structural pick for users who want a full Bank Company Act charter combined with the most polished bank-anchored digital surface in the country and parent ownership of the dominant mobile-money brand. Eastern Bank Skybanking is the alternative for users who want a clean digital UX layered directly on a Scheduled Bank charter with no MFS intermediation. bKash is operationally indispensable for daily payment flow and remains the largest digital wallet in Bangladesh, but the customer's deposit relationship is intermediated through BRAC Bank's trust accounts rather than direct — the cover is real but layered. Nagad and Rocket sit in the MFS class with similar bank-affiliated structures (Bangladesh Post and Dutch-Bangla Bank respectively), and Nagad in particular requires per-product verification given the 2024-2025 regulatory shifts. The rational pattern for a Bangladeshi depositor is: a Scheduled Bank deposit (BRAC Bank, Eastern Bank, or a peer) for BDITF-covered BDT savings up to the BDT 200,000 ceiling, an MFS-anchored wallet (bKash, Rocket, Upay) for the daily transactional surface, and balance-splitting across two BDITF-member institutions once the per-bank cover is exhausted. Verify the current BDITF ceiling on bb.org.bd before funding; verify the Digital Bank licensee list and operating status on bb.org.bd if onboarding to a 2023-2024 cohort entrant.