New Sri Lanka Interbank Payment System goes live today

LankaClear has upgraded the Sri Lanka Interbank Payment System (SLIPS) to facilitate transactions which would enable customers to receive funds on the same day through SLIPS. This is in line with the Central Bank’s objective of moving towards much more efficient electronic fund transfer systems from the paper based instruments.

The environment in which commercial transactions takes place keeps on changing which requires constant upgrading of the national payment system infrastructure to meet the market demand. In recent years, the advances in information technology have paved the way for much more efficient, automated and secure payment systems facilitating on-line real time electronic fund transfers.

The migration to on-line electronic fund transfers has resulted in higher operational efficiency, cost efficiency, greater reliability and security of financial transactions.

In addition to the same day clearing of transactions, the new system facilitates online submission of the transaction files by the participating banks with a high level of security through Digital Signing of the transaction messages.

The system also has the capability of handling up to 600,000 transactions during a session.

LankaClear, the national clearing house envisage that the customers would use the new system to make bill payments, third party account to account transfers and the corporate entities such as stock brokers and insurance companies would use the system to facilitate payments to their customers and also for collection of payments more efficiently and in a more cost effective manner.