LankaClear facilitates efficient payments

LankaClear, Sri Lanka's National Clearing House completed five years since the launch of the state-of-the-art Cheque Imaging and Truncation System - CITS.

Dedicated to enhancing the efficiency of the payment systems industry and taking it into a new era of dynamism and productivity, LankaClear introduced CITS in May 2006, making Sri Lanka the first country in the South Asian region and only the second in the world to install the highly progressive and state-of-the-art clearing system.

CITS is an image based cheque-clearing system which replaces the physical movement of cheques with electronic information flowing throughout the clearing cycle. The elimination of the need for the physical transfer of cheques for purposes of clearing greatly enhanced the security and efficiency of the clearing process, enabling banks to achieve next day clearing and cheque realization as well as extending customer deadlines for cheque deposits for T+1 clearing.

Owned by the Central Bank of Sri Lanka and all commercial banks in the country, LankaClear is one of the most successful public-private partnerships in the country.

Since its inception in 2002 following the divestment of the Sri Lanka Automated Clearing House (SLACH), the company has consistently brought economies of scale to the banking industry by combining the efficiency and dynamism of the private sector with the stability and security characterized by the public sector.

LankaClear offers a multitude of services designed to facilitate efficient payments.

These include the Sri Lanka Interbank Payment System (SLIPS) which is an online interbank electronic fund transfer system enabling the same day transfer of funds in a highly secure environment.

The introduction of the US Dollar Clearing System has significantly expedited the realization of US Dollar cheques and drafts, bringing tangible benefits to customers while significantly improving banking efficiency.