Bangladesh's central bank governor bought breakfast with a QR code — to pull the whole country along

Bangladesh Bank Governor Md Mostaqur Rahman walked into AGB Colony Kitchen Market in Motijheel, Dhaka, on October 5 and paid for his shopping by scanning a Bangla QR code — a deliberate demo to pull small merchants and ordinary shoppers into cashless payments. Since October 1, access to Bangla QR-based payment services has been free, and IFIC Bank is driving the campaign through more than 1,400 branches and sub-branches and some 60,000 merchants nationwide. When the country's top banker queues up at a kitchen market to show how it's done, the message lands: the digital economy is for everyone, not just the already-banked.