The use of digital technology for financial and banking services has flourished in the business world of Sri Lanka today. Over the past year, Sri Lanka has witnessed explosive growth in the adoption of fintech solutions by businesses and consumers alike. It’s a trend evidenced by fast-growing companies in the market like DirectPay,
As more segments of society continue to accept digital payments, the industry is working towards eliminating barriers to adoption. Thus, enabling businesses and consumers alike to enjoy the convenience of digital payments. As per the recent partnership, ComBank will offer Internet Payment Gateway (IPG) support and operate as the acquiring bank for DirectPay’s cashless payment solutions.
Since its inception, DirectPay has come a long way and developed a vast portfolio of products that include an Internet Payment Gateway, a virtual point-of-sale terminal, apps for merchants and consumers, to name a few. All of which have collectively reduced many barriers for consumers and businesses alike to embrace digital payments. It’s a feat that’s largely been made possible due to the core DirectPay platform being able to integrate with existing finance systems utilized by corporations seamlessly.
Meanwhile, when it comes to Internet Payment Gateway providers in Sri Lanka, ComBank is considered a preferred partner for several local businesses. The bank offers payment processing services via Mastercard Payment Gateway Services (MPGS). With a comprehensive set of fraud mitigation tools, secure authentication solutions, fully automated processes to manage easy payment plans, device-optimised responsive payment screens, and tokenization eliminating the need for repeatedly entering card details, the Combank IPG comes with several features desired by the local e-commerce industry. Alongside this, DirectPay also maintains a strategic partnership with MasterCard, which allows the fintech startup to offer globally accepted payment solutions through its platform.
DirectPay intends to upgrade its offerings of customized digital payments solutions for businesses. Particularly for businesses in industries such as insurance, education, and e-commerce, where many transactions happen on a cash-on-delivery basis, DirectPay will soon facilitate a host of digital payment options. In doing so, offering consumers greater flexibility and convenience.
Moving forward, the company aims to expand into new markets and further remove barriers for Small and Medium (SME) businesses and corporations alike in Sri Lanka to accept card and LankaQR payments. Through its collaboration with ComBank, DirectPay will also make financial products such as micro-lending and pay-day loans more accessible to consumers. It’ll also be working towards enabling more efficient means of allowing merchants to make supply-chain payments.
Already, the partnership is showing promising signs of helping businesses across Sri Lanka embrace digital payments. It’s a phenomenon that’s evidenced by DirectPay’s continuous rapid growth. It took the company 20 months to process LKR 2 billion worth of transactions and four months after to cross the LKR 3 billion milestones. But it took only two months for DirectPay to cross the milestone of processing LKR 4 billion worth of payments.
Founder and CEO of DirectPay, Kanishka Weeramunda, credits their success as a promising example of what is possible when innovative fintech startups collaborate with established stalwarts in the banking sector. He went on to say, “Our partnership with ComBank provides the public with the direct benefit of being able to make their payments to these service providers through customized digital solutions that we plan to offer.” Thus, this joining of hands between the two organizations may be anticipated as a catapult for the expansion of fintech in Sri Lanka.
