LankaClear (Private) Limited and JCB International Co. Ltd. (JCBI), the international operations subsidiary of JCB Co., Ltd. (JCB), have entered into a strategic partnership to establish a National Card Scheme (NCS) to issue LankaPay-JCB co-branded cards and to jointly promote the acceptance of such cards with JCB payment solutions.
By integrating JCB payment solutions to LankaPay participant members and leveraging the planned interconnection between the payment networks of LankaClear and JCB, the co-branded cards issued by LankaClear participant members would be accepted globally via the JCB international network and locally through the LankaClear network.
The partnership would also facilitate the acceptance of international JCB cards at ATMs and merchants accepting LankaPay-JCB co-branded cards across Sri Lanka.
Both parties hope to complete the implementation and launch of the issuance and the acceptance of LankaPay-JCB co-branded cards by early next year.
Through this strategic partnership, the issuance of the LankaPay-JCB co-branded cards would be the first-ever JCB branded cards issued in the country.
The acceptance of the internationally issued JCB branded cards in Sri Lanka is expected to reach the same level of acceptance as the LankaPay-JCB co-branded cards issued in Sri Lanka.
This would undoubtedly meet the demand of the usage of cards by the increasing number of tourists visiting Sri Lanka, especially those traveling from India, which is the biggest tourist contingent to Sri Lanka where JCBI is expected to have a large card base in the near future.
General Manager and CEO of LankaClear, Channa de Silva said, “Our quest is to promote cost effective and efficient electronic transactions with the primary objective of reducing cash based transactions.
“NCS is one of the key elements through which we envisage to increase the usage of card-based transactions in the country via our Common Card And Payment Switch (CCAPS),” he said.
Senior VP of JCBI, Yuichiro Kadowaki said, “JCB hopes that the extensive card acceptance network and customer oriented services and promotions throughout Asia, could be experienced by card members of LankaPay-JCB co-branded cards. - ACN Newswire