The Commerce Ministry on Monday started refunding Tk 59 crore to the customers of Qcoom, an e-commerce company, which got stuck at the payment gateway.

Among 6,721 Qcoom customers who did not receive their ordered products despite full payment in advance, 20 customers officially got their money back.

Senior Commerce Secretary Tapan Kanti Ghosh inaugurated the refunding drive at the conference room of the Commerce Ministry.

Tapan Kanti Ghosh said 20 customers received Tk 40,02,413.

He said they decided to provide a unique ID number for each e-commerce company to get registered after a meeting with several ministries. "Hopefully, we’ll be able to start it in the next 15 days."

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He said, "The most important thing was that the customer neither got their money back nor received the products, they wanted the money back. I wanted the opinion of the Law Ministry about those companies against whom cases have been filed.”

In reply, the Law Ministry said all the companies against whom there are cases and the owner is in jail, their customers’ money cannot be refunded. Despite many complaints against Qcoom, there was no case against this company.

Meanwhile, Shomi Kaiser, president of e-Commerce Association (e-CAB), said the refunding 20 customers of Qcoom through Foster Payment Gateway will help overcome the crisis centering e-commerce platforms.

"We think there’re very few companies which do business dishonesty. Most of the entrepreneurs who’re running businesses during the pandemic are working with integrity, most of them small and medium entrepreneurs," she added.

Expressing gratitude to the Commerce Ministry, she said, "It’s a great initiative to refund the customers for which the ministry has been working for the last few months. This will again help the e-commerce sector to regain the trust of people."

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Earlier, e-commerce platform Qcoom and their payment gateway Foster Corporation jointly submitted a list of 6,621 transactions at the commerce ministry of their customers to refund Tk 59.05 crore.
 
Sources said Tk 398 crore of Qcoom was stuck at Foster Payment Gateway, of which purchase orders about half of the money has not been delivered to the customers. The commerce ministry asked them to find a way to refund customers if there were no legal complications.