NSB, Eurogiro tie-up to attract Forex

The National Savings Bank (NSB) will link with Eurogiro to attract more foreign remittances to the bank.:

Anjana Samarasinghe

Eurogiro is a high quality low value payment solution between banks and postal organisations and a gateway to other payment solutions in the Low Value Payment market.

Eurogiro acts as a club with the goal to strengthen the co-operation between Eurogiro and postbanks/commercial banks for electronic payment solutions.

The Eurogiro product range, alliances and service level agreements enable members to offer competitive cross-border payment products meeting their customers' demands.

Eurogiro is also a provider of electronic payment network solutions created for the exchange of transactions between financial institutions and to link to other payment systems. NSB General Manager S.H. Piyasiri said they are in the process of getting Eurogiro membership to develop the bank's foreign remittances.

The Bank became a member of the Society for Worldwide Inter bank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) recently.

SWIFT is a worldwide financial messaging network. Messages are securely and reliably exchanged between banks and other financial institutions. SWIFT connects 8,100 financial institutes in 207 countries. Due to the vast expansion of SWIFT the transaction cost has been reduced by 80 per cent.

Piyasiri also said that after joining with the Eurogiro, the bank expects to enter into bilateral agreements with Eurogiro members in Japan, UK, Italy, USA and France to facilitate foreign remittances of local migrant workers in these countries.

This will enable NSB to link with post offices in these countries to facilitate money transfer.

This system will also help the bank to attract migrant workers who send their money to Sri Lanka using illegal systems and gain more foreign currency to the banking system. Eurogiro has 61 members in 50 countries and conducts payment of remittances through nearly 200 countries. Eurogiro expects to conduct 2.5 million transactions this year.

Meanwhile, NSB lau- nched the "NSB NRFC/ RFC Ranmasu Themasa campaign yesterday to promote NRFC accounts in the bank. Customers who open NRFC accounts in the next three months will qualify for additional benefits from the bank.