UnionPay International (UPI) recently announced that it has signed a cooperation agreement with Sri Lanka’s national payment network LankaPay.
Accordingly, member banks and finance companies of LankaPay who provide the unified LankaQR payment service in the country will be able to accept payments via UnionPay APP at LankaQR Merchants island wide. It’s the first time that LankaPay is directly working with a card scheme on QR payments.
This partnership will enable UnionPay cardholders visiting the country to scan and pay at over 320,000 LankaQR merchants across the island using the UnionPay APP. Major commercial bank APPs supporting UnionPay QR code in China can enjoy this service too as a result of this partnership.
There will be more e-wallets to enable this service in future. LankaPay as Sri Lanka’s National Payment Network serves a large number of small and medium-sized merchants in Sri Lanka. With the LankaPay partnership, UnionPay will further enhance its cross-border business travel payment service capabilities by helping local LankaQR merchants to provide international visitors with convenient QR payment experience.
Cai Jianbo, President of China UnionPay and Chairman of UnionPay International, says that this collaboration on QR network interoperability is a joint effort by UPI and LankaPay to better facilitate people-to-people exchanges between China and Sri Lanka.
This innovative cooperation model enables LankaPay to open its QR code acceptance network to UnionPay swiftly on a large scale, which strengthens the capabilities of the local payment network to service international consumers.
Going forward, both parties will enable the use of Sri Lankan e-wallets on the global QR code network including in China. Building on this collaboration, UnionPay, with its strengths in the network, technology and resources, will continue to deepen its ties with players in the payment sector of Sri Lanka.