BoC mates customers for payments

By Indika Sakalasooriya
Sri Lanka’s state financial giant, Bank of Ceylon (BoC) last week introduced a SMS based transaction account, ‘BoC PayMate’, partnering with one of India’s leading mobile banking service providers, PayMate India (Pvt) Ltd.

The launch of the BoC PayMate was aimed at the increasingly busy lifestyles of the banks customers.

“Sri Lanka has a mobile penetration of almost 30 percent and its growing. So we thought the easiest and the fastest way to serve our customers is through their mobile. With BoC PayMate,” BoC Chairman Gamini Wickramasinghe said.

With the launch of BoC PayMate, BoC aims to change the card business paradigm by introducing cashless payments for over six million customers of theirs overnight. “With the launch of Boc PayMate, the BoC customers will even be able to make their monthly electricity, water and telephone bill payments via a simple SMS” a statement by the BoC says.

The service will be available for all BoC customers absolutely free of cost without any registration or usage charges. Without opening a new account, the existing BoC account holders can also register to PayMate,

Explaining the technicalities of PayMate, BoC General Manager B.A.C Fernando said that once an account holder registers for PayMate he/she gets a PIN number and through that he/she can do any transaction with the selected merchants by the BoC. “The speciality is that there is no specific mobile operator for PayMate. What you just need is a simple handset through which you can SMS” Fernando said.

Ajay Adiseshann, Managing Director and Founder, PayMate, commenting on their first business venture out of India said that partnering with Sri Lanka’s largest bank is surely a feather in the cap for PayMate. He also said that with mobile penetration growing at 30% each year, the Sri Lankan market presents a unique opportunity for m-commerce and we are excited to be first SMS based mobile payment service in the country.

In the coming weeks, BOC PayMate plans to grow its merchant network across all categories including retail stores, food and beverage outlets, online sites and utility bill payments to enable mobile transactions. In Sri Lanka, PayMate is represented by its local partner Fortunaglobal who will work closely in building the mobile payment eco-system.