LankaClear celebrates a decade of T+1 cheque clearing
View(s):LankaClear (Pvt) Ltd, the company that operates LankaPay – the National Payment Network of Sri Lanka and functions under the supervision and guidance of the Central Bank, recently celebrated its 10th year anniversary of launching their revolutionary Cheque Imaging and Truncation System (CITS). CITS handles all the domestic interbank rupee cheque clearings in the country. Cheque truncation is the process that converts a physical cheque into a substitute electronic form (digital image based) for transmission to the paying bank. This process eliminates cumbersome physical presentation of the cheque, which saves time and processing costs.
With the introduction of CITS in 2006, Sri Lanka became the first in South Asia and second in the world to have rolled out such world-class payment and settlement infrastructure to enable nationwide cheque clearance on T+1 basis where beneficiary could encash a cheque on the next business day, the company said in a media release. The introduction of CITS revolutionised the clearing process moving from physical cheque to an image-based clearing mode. This has brought down the clearing cycle to one working day from a previous three to five day period due to elimination of physical movement the instrument.
This has also enabled the banks to offer extended time for their customers to submit cheques, which has provided greater convenience to all banking customers. Speaking of the 10th year anniversary of CITS, Anil Amarasuriya, Chairman – LankaClear said “LankaClear has been providing a vital national service by mediating all domestic interbank payments and settlements on behalf of the Central Bank; and by ensuring greater efficiency, security and inclusion in financial services. Smooth and uninterrupted operation of CITS for 10 long years is a commendable achievement of the LankaClear team which is in testament to the confidence reposed on us by all our stakeholders”.
Expressing his sentiments on the anniversary, Channa de Silva, General Manager/CEO of LankaClear said “Even though started as a cheque clearing house, we have moved onto further expanding our services by establishing LankaPay National Payment Network where the newest service being offered is real time interbank fund transfer. With all these electronic payment instruments going live, we anticipated the cheque volumes to go down, however contrary to our expectations, the volumes have increased.
The North and East provinces have recorded the highest percentage volume growth for cheques compared to rest of the country. After the war, the general public in these areas are found to be depositing their money into bank accounts rather than keeping cash with them, thus, the possible reason for growth. However, we assume that the cheque volumes would gradually decline when a majority of the public moves into adopting electronic payment modes”.