The appetite for shopping through online platforms waned in July compared to a month ago as people became cautious about placing orders when a series of scams focused on e-commerce companies began to appear.

In July, customers spent Tk 740 crore on products and services, the lowest in five months and 42% lower than Tk’s 1,277 crore in June, according to data from the Bangladesh Bank.

There was, however, a 15 percent year-over-year growth in July of this year. In the same month last year, people bought Tk 640 crore of products.

In terms of the number of transactions, consumers placed 2% fewer orders in July than in June. The total number of transactions was 24.3 lakh in July, up from 24.8 lakh in June, according to data from the Bangladesh Bank.

It was the first time since September last year that purchases in online marketplaces had declined as reports of anomalies on some e-commerce platforms were made public.

E-commerce had grown over the past decade, and growth accelerated after rising coronavirus disease infections forced people to stay home and place orders online to purchase goods. and services.

Customers became cautious after a Bangladesh Bank inspection report on Evaly found that the e-commerce platform had a huge mismatch between assets and liabilities.

The central bank discovered that Evaly had liabilities of over Tk 400 crore against current assets of Tk 65 crore as of March 14 this year – a discrepancy that prompted the Commerce Department to ask Evaly to explain where was about Tk 338 crore that the platform owed to customers and traders.

Law enforcement arrested Evaly chief executive Mohammad Rassel and chairman Shamima Nasrin last week, while senior officials from another e-commerce platform, e-Orange, were also reportedly arrested. sent to jail and were tried for embezzling client funds.

Data from the Bangladesh Bank showed that transactions through e-commerce platforms crossed the Tk 1,000 crore mark for the first time in May of this year, as people found online shopping convenient and useful for fighting the Covid-19 pandemic.

The transaction hit its highest level in terms of value in June of this year since December 2010, when customers only purchased Tk 185 crore of goods and services online.