DirectPay to offer next era of innovations in cashless payments

From left: DirectPay team comprising Chief Operating Officer/Co-Founder Sasindu Pathiranage, Founder/CEO Kanishka Weeramunda and Co-Founder/Director Dinesh Karunathilaka 

Founded in 2018 as a fintech startup to revolutionise the cashless payments arena of Sri Lanka, DirectPay has come a long way in terms of product reach and innovations. Enabling financial inclusion to all citizens, DirectPay offers cashless payment methods, providing affordability and accessibility with convenience and agility. 

Given the pandemic, helping Sri Lanka progress towards becoming a cashless society similar to the likes of regional powerhouses such as Singapore and China, is an agenda of DirectPay over the next one year. As such, they are dedicated to ensuring that the local payments landscape is on par with international advancements, including security, quality and innovations aspects. 

Explaining the product concept, Founder Kanishka Weeramunda, who accounts for more than 20 years of experience in ICT and is also the Founder of PayMedia said: “DirectPay is an electronic payment option providing a viable alternative to cash, where users can either scan a QR code, enter their card details or use any of their bank accounts to make a payment. This could be either through a mobile-based payment app, an internet payment gateway, a payment link to receive remote payments, subscription payments where there’s a recurring revenue or it could be a bill settlement, all of which ensure a seamless journey to customers or service providers, covering the entire payment ecosystem. The beginnings of DirectPay was inspired from the insight of seeing people relying on their phones to carry out a majority of their activities. We wanted to add payments to the list, thus eliminating the burden of carrying a wallet, notes and coins.” 

Driven by the firm’s mission to deliver the world’s best payment experiences to customers, Kanishka emphasised that DirectPay was created to provide transactions that facilitated lesser cost with added convenience. He explained: “We are essentially a fintech service provider under the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, that works in tandem with Commercial Bank, Cargills Bank and Nations Trust Bank as our acquiring banks. DirectPay is committed to the digitalisation of payments by introducing solutions to establish a digital payment ecosystem in Sri Lanka.” 

DirectPay having seen tremendous growth in the B2B segment during the last financial year owing to the pandemic is keen on moving towards digital modes of accepting payments. Identifying this change of market behaviour, DirectPay has introduced several products for micro SMEs to accept card and LankaQR based payments for an affordable cost without compromising security and reliability. The firm also offered customised solutions for larger corporates to provide them with front-end applications to conveniently process transactions.

The brand was also recognised as the island-wide winner of the ‘Best Disruptor 2021’ and was awarded the prestigious ‘Best Disruptor – Western Province’ along with ‘Best Innovation in Business Management’ at the SLASSCOM National Ingenuity Awards 2021 held recently.

Chief Operating Officer Sasindu Pathiranage talking of the next chapter of growth for DirectPay said: “The emergence of COVID-19 has, disrupted the way money is transferred and how payments are made. We believe that cashless payment systems can now stimulate economic growth by making payments easier and convenient, provide time and cost savings opportunities for businesses, reduce manual reconciliation, counting and cash handling, as well as reducing the governmental cost of issuing hard cash. Essentially, anyone with a smartphone can make cross-border payments and purchases inexpensively and efficiently.”

As such, DirectPay over the next one year will be concentrating their effort on designing solutions around cardless checkout on e-commerce websites and Tap & Pay feature for retail payments, as well micro credit based on credit scores. They will also provide an omni channel to the merchants, enabling them to accept e-commerce payments via cards, wallets, LankaQR or any other retail payments through a smart all in one Mobile POS device. 

Motivated by its ambition to bring about positive change and driven by its passion for nurturing the digital payments ecosystem of Sri Lanka, DirectPay is geared, now more than ever, to bring about the next wave of innovation in cashless payments.