People’s Bank facilitates online payments for Sri Lanka Customs

People’s Bank recently entered into a strategic partnership agreement with Sri Lanka Customs, to make customs duty or tax payments more convenient for importers, through the introduction of an online payment gateway.

People’s Bank Chief Executive Officer/General Manager N. Vasantha Kumar (left) and Sri Lanka Customs Director General Jagath P. Wijeweera exchanging the MoU

Thanks to this partnership People’s Bank customers can now make Custom’s duty and tax payments for their imports via the People’s Bank website, thereby eliminating a tedious procedure that importers have to undergo in order to clear their goods.

The launch of this new service also means that importers can make transactions at any time of the day, irrespective of banking hours adding far greater convenience and ease to importers. The Custom’s department will process the transaction as soon as the payment is updated in their system.

Speaking about the launch of this new service People’s Bank CEO/General Manager N. Vasantha Kumar said: “People’s Bank has always prided itself on being in the forefront of servicing the nation’s various financial needs and to reach out to as many people as possible so that we can make banking an accessible service to the greater majority of this country. Thanks to fruitful and innovative partnerships such as this that we are able to achieve this goal and we truly believe that this partnership will add value and offer far greater convenience to importers.”

“Embracing new technologies is the key to survive in today’s dynamic environment and we are proud to be a bank that constantly sets the benchmark in terms of technological advancement.”

Commenting on the advantages of this new service the Director General of Sri Lanka Customs Jagath P. Wijeweera said: “Customs is currently working on expanding their service and offering all importers a service with high quality and better standards which importers would be able to benefit from in the near future. With the newly introduced online duty and tax payment scheme via People’s Bank, the accounting process, data entering and monitoring transactions will be extremely convenient thereby vastly improving the productivity of the staff.”

 “For the past several years we have been carrying out the payment process manually and have faced many issues such as many middlemen transactions taking place leading to the organisation losing money and importers being played out. I believe with the introduction of the new system we would be able to maintain transparency. Also being two respected state organizations and always having the goal of servicing the nation with high integrity, I look forward to a fruitful partnership with People’s Bank,” he added.