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“More unified payment interfaces vital to boost tourism”

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India has been the leading economic partner and the largest contributor to tourist traffic to Sri Lanka, Indian High Commissioner Santosh Jha said addressing the PhonePe launch at ITC Ratnadipa, Colombo.

Sri Lanka’s National Payment Network LankaPay announced its partnership with PhonePe one of India’s most popular FinTech apps – towards accepting UPI payments at LankaQR merchant points.

He said in 2023 more than 300,000 Indian tourists travelled to Sri Lanka which was 20.36% of tourists coming into Sri Lanka. With the launch of the UPI, QR based payments in Sri Lanka, Indians coming to Sri Lanka will be able to use them and that will not only provide ease and convenience to them but also help the country’s economy,” he said.

Over 14 million people use the internet in Sri Lanka and when considering the total population of 21.86 million this is a very high penetration of 67%, Channa de Silva CEO, LankaPay told the PhonePe launch.

The digital transactions that will be carried out in a country will be relative to the population, GDP and size of business of the country and out of 15 million who use the internet 93% are smartphone users, the LankaPay CEO said.

De Silva said the major problem the economy was facing was to bring the currency held by the public to the banking system and out of the Rs 1.2 trillion currency circulated in the 4th quarter of 2023, Rs 90 billion or 76% was held by the people.

He said introducing unified payments interfaces (UPI) such as PhonePe was significant to address this issue.

The banking sector in 2023-24 facilitated Rs 29.33 trillion and USD 1.2 billion worth of transactions out of which 163 million real time interbank transactions worth Rs 13.6 trillion had taken place.

Meanwhile, Ritesh Pai, CEO, PhonePe International announced that its app users travelling to Sri Lanka can now make payments using UPI across LankaPayQR merchants nationwide.

Users can simply scan LankaQR code to make secure and quick payments without carrying cash or calculating currency conversions.

Their account will be debited in INR, showing the currency exchange rate. These transactions are facilitated by the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and LankaPay National Payment Network.

The post “More unified payment interfaces vital to boost tourism” appeared first on DailyNews.

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