Sampath Bank powers Government ‘eService’

Sampath Bank has partnered with ICTA (Information and Communication Technology Agency) to take Sri Lanka to an era of eGovernance.

This initiative marks the dawning of a host of ‘e-service offerings’ from Government organizations to citizens via electronic media powered by “Sampath Payment Gate” (Electronic payment channels of Sampath Bank). And it redefines the delivery of public services and the broader interactions between citizens and government.

The Department of Motor Vehicles was the first amongst the Government organizations to subscribe to eServices using “Lanka Gate”, a framework managed by ICT agency of Sri Lanka.

And Sampath bank is the sole provider of financial services to “Lanka Gate”.

A randomly selected citizen of Sri Lanka T.M. Sirisoma created history on December 30, 2009 by using his Sampath Bank Master Card to renew the revenue licence on-line by connecting to “Lanka Gate”, which was never a reality few months back. Sampath Bank was selected as the sole banker to provide on-line banking facilities to “Lanka Gate” through a competitive bidding process where 22 Sri Lankan based commercial banks were invited.

Though Sampath Bank has been always in the forefront of technology and has been the leader in ICT based innovations for last few decades, it was a whole new experience for the bank as well as all stakeholders of the project since it was the first time in the history of Sri Lanka that on-line financial transitioning were used in obtaining a public service.

It is important to note that this project redefined the public and private sector relationships, especially in the area of financial transactions.

Again, it was the very first time in the history that an account of public sector organization is opened in a private sector bank to receive public funds breaking all barriers, which prevented private banks being involved in delivering public sector services.

And more importantly this project facilitated in renewing decades old financial policies and regulations of the government departments enabling them to use on-line financial transactions for the services offered.

And this could be the beginning of many successful public and private sector collaborations in offering financial services to general public creating more value for them.

Being supremely ready and continuously innovating in the area of Information and Communication Technology may not reward you always and also may seem financially unviable at times, especially in the times of a global recession.

However, projects like this are the ones that would redefine payback of your investments, financially and otherwise.

Internet banking is an essential part of today’s banking services and it is been used by many customer for various banking needs including utility bill payments of many service providers, however up until this ground breaking project no governmental service in Sri Lanka was possible using an internet payment.

Sampath Bank with its recent accolades of “The best Bank of the Year 2009” and “The best Corporate Citizen of the year 2009” is proud be in the forefront of re-engineering public sector work processes through the strategic use of ICT and by creating value to Sri Lankan citizens through innovative ICT-enabled services.