Sri Lanka is among the top three destinations for Indian travellers specially the younger generation, said PhonePe International India, CEO Ritesh Pai.
He was speaking at the launch of Sri Lanka’s National Payment Network LankaPay’s partnership with PhonePe, one of India’s popular FinTech apps to accept UPI payments at LankaQR merchant points at ITC Ratnadipa, Colombo on May 15.
He said that Sri Lanka could expect over 600,000 Indian tourists this year and payment solutions such as PhonePe would lead to more Indians visiting the country.
Sri Lanka could benefit with these Indian preferred travel patterns shifted to Sri Lanka as the Indian outbound tourism sector is expected to reach USD 410 billion mark in 2030, Pai said.
“With India being the mostly populated country in the world and with a growing middle-class young travellers are expected to be the top three outbound tourist countries in the world,” he said.
This collaboration offers convenience to Indian tourists who can now use a familiar and secure payment method while traveling and pay across LankaQR merchant points.
PhonePe has always been at the forefront of driving innovation in payments. “We are incredibly proud to be driving UPI adaptation across India, and our expansion to Sri Lanka is another exciting step forward.”
He said that its app users travelling to Sri Lanka can now make payments using UPI across LankaPayQR merchants nationwide. Users can simply scan LankaQR code to make secure and quick payments without carrying cash or calculating currency conversions.
Guest of Honour Central Bank Governor Dr. Nandalal Weerasinghe acknowledged the collaboration’s capacity to unlock new opportunities and enhance competitiveness and the benefits that it would bring to Sri Lankan merchants.
CEO, LankaPay, Channa de Silva said, “This partnership is bound to provide greater convenience to Indian Tourists and Business Travelers in making seamless UPI payments at all LankaQR merchant points in Sri Lanka via PhonePe app.”
“We are excited about the potential of this collaboration that would enhance payment experience to Indian tourists and business travellers during their stay in Sri Lanka and also provide the merchants with a cost-effective proposition to card payments.
“I envisage that innovation to be the cornerstone of this alliance and would lead to further strengthening of bilateral relations between the two countries,” he said.
PhonePe Group’s flagship product, the PhonePe digital payments app, was launched in Aug 2016. In just seven years, the company has scaled rapidly to become India’s leading consumer payments app with over 520 million registered users and a digital payments acceptance network of 38 million merchants.
