COLOMBO: Established more than 200 years ago in 1809, Sri Lanka Customs is one of the oldest Customs administrations in the world. In their quest to be a leading promoter of advanced technology driven Customs operations in the region, Sri Lanka Customs created history by implementing a state-of-the-art online payment platform for Customs payments in partnership with the Central Bank of Sri Lanka.
This landmark initiative was ceremonially inaugurated by Eran Wickramaratne, State Minister of Finance and Mass Media and Dr. Indrajit Coomaraswamy, Governor of the Central Bank at a historic event held at the Cinnamon Grand Hotel on July 20.
Prior to launching this revolutionary platform, only the importers/exporters who maintained their bank accounts at the two state banks, Bank of Ceylon and Peoples Bank, were able to make direct Customs payments online. Other importers/exporters who maintained their accounts at other banks had to go through a tedious process of having to obtain a pay order at a cost of Rs. 250/- from their bank, take it physically to a branch of the two state banks and get another pay order from the State Bank with Sri Lanka Customs as the beneficiary. In the new initiative, importers/exporters receive a cost benefit as their bank would only charge a nominal fee of Rs. 50/- to make the Customs payments, irrespective of the value of the transaction.
This is the fee currently levied by any bank to make a real-time fund transfer to another bank based on a directive issued by the Central Bank to cap the maximum customer fee to the above amount. The new system would totally eliminate the previous inefficient payment process that resulted in unnecessary delays and impacted the businesses of the importers/exporters.
In order to address a long-felt need of the importers/exporters, Sri Lanka Customs embarked on an ambitious project with the approval of the monetary board and support of the Central Bank who is the authority in approving and regulating any payment system in Sri Lanka. With this ground breaking initiative by the Sri Lanka Customs, the importers/exporters who maintain their bank accounts at any bank can now make Customs payments via their banks’ online banking facility.
This initiative was taken as a result of Sri Lanka Customs requesting the support of the Central Bank to facilitate the importers/exporters to make online Customs payments on a real-time basis from any bank in the country. Subsequently, based on a directive from the Central Bank and with the approval of the monetary board, LankaClear (Pvt) Ltd. implemented LankaPay Online Payment Platform (LPOPP).
This online payment platform will facilitate online Customs payments from all commercial banks. LPOPP has been designed to communicate with SL Custom’s ASYCUDA system on one side while the same Payment Platform will also be the front end for the participating Banks of LankaClear’s Common Electronic Fund Transfer Switch (CEFTS) to liaise with SL Customs.