Bangladesh Pitches a Taka-Rufiyaa Swap to Untangle Remittances From the Maldives

Bangladesh Bank has written to its counterpart in Male with a specific ask: make it easier for more than 100,000 Bangladeshi workers in the Maldives to send money home without losing a cut to informal brokers along the way. The proposal, laid out in an 8 October letter from Governor Md Mostaqur Rahman to Maldives Monetary Authority Governor Ahmed Munawar, comes as formal remittances from the Maldives have been sliding even as the workforce there has not.

• Bangladesh Bank has proposed a currency cooperation plan with the Maldives Monetary Authority to ease remittances
• Formal remittances from the Maldives fell about 16.4% in FY2025-26, to roughly $118 million, from $141.1 million the year before
• Workers currently struggle to convert Maldivian rufiyaa into usable funds, often turning to curb market dollar trades or costly formal fees
• The plan floats three options: rufiyaa settlement via the Asian Clearing Union, taka denominated travel cards, and a possible bilateral currency swap

The scale of the workforce makes the stakes clear. More than 200,000 foreign workers were employed in the Maldives as of 2024, with over 100,000 of them Bangladeshi, according to the letter's own figures. Yet the money they send home through official channels has not kept pace with that presence. In the first three months of the current fiscal year, Bangladesh received just $38.05 million in remittances from the Maldives, a pace that, if it continued through the year, would fall well short of FY2025-26's already reduced total.

Why the money isn't coming home the easy way

The core problem, according to the governor's letter, is that Bangladeshi banks and exchange houses are reluctant to accept the Maldivian rufiyaa directly. That reluctance pushes workers toward two unappealing options: buying US dollars on the curb market at informal rates, or paying high fees to use the limited formal channels that do exist. Neither route is efficient, and both leave money on the table that could otherwise reach families in Bangladesh at full value.

This is not the first time the two countries have discussed the issue. Bangladesh's High Commissioner to the Maldives met the CEO of the Bank of Maldives earlier this year to explore a simplified window for converting rufiyaa directly into taka, alongside broader banking cooperation on trade and investment credit. That meeting produced goodwill and a commitment to keep talking, but October's governor-to-governor letter is the first formal proposal to put specific mechanisms on the table.

Three ways to fix the pipeline

The letter outlines three distinct mechanisms Bangladesh Bank wants the Maldives Monetary Authority to consider. The first routes rufiyaa through the Asian Clearing Union, a regional payment arrangement, so that recipients in Bangladesh would ultimately receive taka through authorised dealer banks rather than handling foreign currency conversion themselves. The second targets travel spending rather than remittances directly: Maldivian banks and money transfer operators would accept rufiyaa for payments from Bangladeshi visitors, while Bangladeshi banks could issue taka denominated cards usable in the Maldives. The third, and most structurally significant, is a bilateral currency swap arrangement between the two central banks aimed specifically at easing the repatriation of workers' earnings.

Bangladesh Bank has also offered to send a joint delegation, including officials from the Bangladesh Mission in the Maldives, for direct talks with the MMA. None of the three mechanisms can move forward without regulatory sign off from both sides, and compliance with each country's own financial laws, so the proposal is best read as an opening position rather than a done deal.

"Banks and exchange houses are reluctant to accept the Maldivian local currency directly." , from Bangladesh Bank's correspondence on the remittance channel

What it means for you

For the more than 100,000 Bangladeshi workers in the Maldives and the families who depend on their earnings, the immediate effect of this proposal is exactly zero, nothing changes until the two central banks agree on mechanics and timelines. But if a swap or clearing arrangement does materialise, workers could see more of their pay reach home in taka rather than being discounted through curb market dollar conversion, and families receiving that money could plan around a more predictable exchange rate rather than whatever rate the informal market offers that week.

In the meantime, families receiving remittances from any corridor, not just the Maldives, can use BD Financial Review's currency converter to check what a given transfer is actually worth in taka before deciding how to use or save it, and anyone planning to put a lump sum remittance into a fixed deposit can compare current bank offers with the FDR rate comparison tool.