Bangladesh's 3% Probashi Card bonus: does it actually arrive?

It is not, yet. The 3% is a planned top-up for a card that is in trials in four or five countries, and the UK is not one of them. The scheme paying out on your send today is the 2.5% the Bangladesh government has been adding since 2022, and the Finance Minister said in the current year's budget it will keep paying.

On £300, the 2.5% is about 1,226 taka that your mother sees in her account on top of what the app pays in.

What the 3% actually is

The 3% is a planned bonus for people whose receiver, or whose own self, holds the Probashi Card. The card is a new government ID-and-debit card for Bangladeshi workers abroad, run through Janata Bank in phase one and Probashi Kallyan Bank in phase two. The government has said it wants 50,000 cards distributed by December 2026 and 200,000 by June 2027.

The trial started in mid-August 2026. It is live in four or five countries that are not the UK. State Minister Nurul Haque Nur said on 13 October 2026 that the 3% will apply only once the card is finalised and delivered. The government is still assessing the response to the trial, and no UK rollout date has been published. Until a card is in your family's hand, or in yours, the 3% is a plan on paper. Your send is still on the 2.5%.

What the 2.5% actually is, right now

The 2.5% is a government top-up paid in taka. You pay pounds to a licensed UK app or bank; the app routes the money through a Bangladesh bank or an approved exchange house; the Bangladesh bank credits the taka to your receiver and adds 2.5% of what you sent, in taka, alongside it. No separate claim form is needed on normal transfers. The top-up sits on your receiver's statement, usually within the same working day the bank payout arrives, or the same hour a bKash payout arrives.

You the sender have to be a Bangladeshi national working abroad for the 2.5% to apply. Someone with a British passport who was born in Bangladesh counts. Someone with no Bangladeshi passport or Bangladeshi origin does not.

You cannot be paid by a government, a statutory body or an autonomous body. A diplomat or a public-sector worker for a foreign state does not get the top-up on money they send home.

The money has to move through a licensed route. A bank transfer, a licensed money-transfer app, or a Bangladesh Bank-approved exchange house all qualify. A hundi payment through a cousin or a shop in Whitechapel does not.

The hundi maths on £300

The real exchange rate on the day this piece was pulled, the one you get if you search for pound to taka on Google, is about 163.5 taka to the pound. On a straight £300 send, that is 49,050 taka. Add the 2.5% government top-up and you arrive at about 50,276 taka in your mother's account.

The hundi rate quoted in Bangladesh for the past two years has often run a few percent above the official number. If that still holds, call it roughly 168 to 170 taka to the pound before any informal fee. The straight hundi number on £300 would be 50,400 to 51,000 taka. Nothing is added on top of that.

With the 2.5% in play, the gap narrows most of the way. The formal route is a few hundred taka behind a quiet hundi route and roughly even against a tighter one. It is behind by more, often £5 or £6 on £300, if you use a UK bank that hides a 2% or 3% gap inside the rate it gives you. The bank's page shows no fee, but the money is quietly taken off the exchange rate instead.

If a UK app pays close to the real exchange rate and charges a visible fee of a pound or two, the 2.5% does most of the work. The hundi premium is still real, but on a routine family send it no longer swallows the formal route.

Where the taka arrives

A bank deposit arrives as taka in a BDT account at Dutch-Bangla, City Bank, BRAC, Agrani, Islami Bank, Janata or several dozen other licensed banks. On most apps the taka is credited the same working day, and the 2.5% appears on the same statement.

A bKash payout is faster. The taka arrives in your receiver's bKash wallet within minutes, spendable from their phone, with the same 2.5% applied. Nagad and Rocket work the same way; they are the other two licensed mobile wallets.

A cash pickup against ID at a counter is slightly more expensive on most apps, but the 2.5% rules do not change.

What a UK app has to be, for the 2.5% to arrive

Not every app you see in the UK app store moves the money through an approved route for Bangladesh. The money has to end at a Bangladesh bank or a licensed exchange house, and the app has to be registered to pass the government's 2.5% through. The app's own Bangladesh page should say 2.5% cashback for the recipient or something close to that. Your receiver should see the top-up on the account statement after the send clears, usually tagged as a government incentive. And you yourself must hold a Bangladeshi passport, as above.

Wise, Remitly, WorldRemit, Instarem and TaptapSend all move the money through Bangladesh banks and licensed mobile wallet partners for sending from the UK to Bangladesh. Remitly's UK Bangladesh page carries the 2.5% line on the main banner. WorldRemit publishes the full eligibility rules on its Bangladesh page. Wise does not advertise the 2.5% on the UK page, but the money moves through the same approved route and the Bangladesh bank adds the 2.5% on the receiver side the same way. A UK bank moves the money through an approved route too, but the fee and the gap inside the rate make the overall package worse by more than the 2.5% recovers.

The verdict, for this month

If your family does not hold a Probashi Card, and almost no family in Bangladesh does yet, the 3% is not a factor on this month's send. The choice is the one it has been for the past three years. A licensed UK app that pays close to the real exchange rate and charges a pound or two in visible fee puts about 50,276 taka on £300 in your mother's hand, with the 2.5% included. A hundi route puts a few hundred more, loses the 2.5%, and leaves no record on your receiver's bank statement. A UK bank puts noticeably less and quietly keeps the difference.

If you already send through Wise, Remitly or Instarem, stay there. The 2.5% is already arriving on your receiver's statement. The 3% is a headline for a card none of you yet holds.

If you send through a UK bank, open one of the apps above. On a £300 send you will see roughly £10 to £20 more in taka at the other end, plus the 2.5%.

If you send through a cousin or a shop in Whitechapel, the hundi rate still wins by a sliver on paper, but you lose the 2.5% and leave no bank record. For routine family sends, the formal route has caught up.

If you are a British citizen with no Bangladeshi passport, do not expect the 2.5%. The scheme is for Bangladeshi nationals. Ask your receiver whether the top-up appears on the first send before counting on it.

What would change the maths

The likeliest trigger is the Probashi Card trial opening to a UK group of workers and your family or you being issued one. Next, Bangladesh Bank would need to publish a foreign exchange circular that names the card and the 3% rate with a date on it. Even then, the government still has to clear the backlog of unpaid 2.5% top-ups, which stood at 7,550 crore taka at the end of May 2026, so that the 2.5% (and later the 3%) credits inside days on every send rather than weeks on some of them.

The piece will update when any of those moves. For now, 2.5% is what arrives on £300 to Bangladesh this month, and that is the number to send to.

Rates and figures on this page were pulled on 2026-10-14. The real exchange rate used in the maths is 163.5 taka per pound. The 3% and the Probashi Card tracking are from the 13 October 2026 statements by State Minister Nurul Haque Nur in The Business Standard and The Daily Star.

Corrections

None so far. If we get something wrong, the fix is dated here.