By: Staff Writer
Colombo (LNW): Sri Lanka is set to enhance digital travel experience through cross- border digital payments partnering with online payment platform Alipay recently.
Alipay+ recently signed an MoU with Sri Lanka’s National Payment Network – LankaPay towards enhancing inbound and outbound travel experience through cross-border digital payments.
It will be enabling users of Alipay+ payment partners to make payments seamlessly at over 400,000 LankaQR merchants across Sri Lanka, officials of the company disclosed.
The partnership will also enable Sri Lankans to use their LankaQR enabled apps to scan and pay at Alipay+ merchants globally when traveling overseas.
By early 2024, users of leading Asian e-wallets from the region including Hong Kong SAR, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea and Thailand, will be able to use cashless payments when they travel to Sri Lanka.
This facilty will be provided with Alipay+ – a suite of global cross-border digital payments, marketing and digitalization solutions operated by Ant Group – by simply scanning LankaQR. More e-wallets are expected to join in the near future, officials said.
LankaQR is a project initiated by the Central Bank of Sri Lanka to ensure all QR codes and QR based transactions in Sri Lanka are standardized and interoperable. Introduced in 2020, LankaQR network is managed and operated by LankaPay, the operator of Sri Lanka’s National Payment Network.
Welcoming Alipay+ aboard, Channa de Silva, Chief Executive Officer of LankaPay stated “this important partnership with Alipay+, is a significant milestone in our endeavour to facilitate seamless cross-border transactions in support of the vision to become a global player in digital payments.
He expressed the belief that this partnership will provide greater convenience to Asian tourists visiting Sri Lanka and a more acceptable proposition especially to the SME merchants with substantially low commission rate compared to card payments.
Additionally, all e-wallets supported by LankaPay will be accepted by Alipay+ global merchant network by end of 2024, enabling Sri Lankans traveling overseas to simply pay with their familiar home e-wallet. Alipay+ is currently accepted at tens of millions of merchants in more than 50 countries.
Alipay+ and LankaPay will also be partnering on joint marketing efforts to promote Sri Lanka as a tourist destination and tourism-related local businesses overseas.
Dr. Cherry Huang, General Manager of Alipay+ Offline Merchant Services, Ant Group, said: “Alipay+ continues to accelerate the shift towards digital travel in more regions through our integrations with national standardized QR codes, this time in Sri Lanka with LankaPay.
