Alipay+ goes live in SL

From left: LankaPay CEO - Channa de Silva; LankaPay Chairman -  L.H.A. Lakshman Silva; Ant International General Manager for South East Asia, Australia and New Zealand – Edward Yue; and Ant International Country Manager for Thailand, South Asia & Indochina -  Sittipong Kittiprapapong. Pic by Pradeep Pathirena 

Over 400,000 LANKAQR merchants across Sri Lanka will be able to accept cross-border mobile payments from tourists and business travellers with Sri Lanka announcing the launch of Alipay+.

LankaPay - Sri Lanka’s National Payment Network, announced yesterday its partnership with Ant International, a leading global digital payment, digitisation and financial technology provider, to launch Alipay+ acceptance.

During the first phase, merchants will be able to accept payments via 14 international e-wallets connected to Alipay+. 

Alipay+, Ant International’s cross-border mobile payment and digitalisation solution, now connects over 1.7 billion users via 36 international e-wallets and banks apps worldwide. During the initial phase, travellers from 10 countries and regions, will be able to scan the LANKAQR code at more than 400,000 merchants across the island to make payments.

The Alipay+ partners enabled for cross-border payment acceptance in Sri Lanka in the first phase include: Alipay (Chinese mainland), AlipayHK (Hong Kong SAR), MPay (Macao SAR), Hipay (Mongolia), GCash (the Philippines), Changi Pay and OCBC Digital (Singapore), Touch ‘n Go eWallet and MyPB by Public Bank Berhad (Malaysia), Naver Pay and Toss Pay (South Korea), TrueMoney (Thailand), BigPay (Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand), and Tinaba (Italy). 

According to LankaPay CEO Channa de Silva, the collaboration signifies the commitment to enhance payment convenience to tourists and business travellers to Sri Lanka and attract much needed foreign exchange into the country. 

“Our aim is to support the country’s booming tourism sector with seamless and secure digital payments providing a greater convenience to the travellers whilst providing a cost-efficient digital payment acceptance mechanism to local merchants,” he said at the launch event in Colombo yesterday.

LANKAQR is a national initiative launched by the Central Bank of Sri Lanka to ensure all QR code based transactions are standardized and interoperable in Sri Lanka. Introduced in 2020, LANKAQR network is managed and operated by LankaPay, providing a platform to connect consumers, banks and merchants into a single payment network across the country.