Commercial Bank joins technology initiative for tea leaf suppliers in Sri Lanka

The Commercial Bank of Ceylon’s participation in a ground-breaking initiative in Sri Lanka’s tea plantation sector to automate the process of procurement of tea leaves and settlement for bought leaf will result in sophisticated technology and banking services reaching a largely underserved segment.

Sri Lanka’s largest private bank has been designated the Preferred Bank for the issue of the first Hybrid Debit Card coupled with Sony ‘FeliCa’ Near Field Communication (NFC) technology in the market, ena- bling its promoter Smart Metro (Pvt) Ltd. to deploy a Debit Card cum Identification Card for tea leaf suppliers.

Armed with these personalised cards linked to savings accounts at Commercial Bank, tea leaf suppliers can simply tap their cards on the data acquisition device to promptly identify each supplier through NFC technology and to obtain a detailed receipt for the weight of the leaves supplied. All data required for automatic calculation of the payments to leaf suppliers are instantly transmitted to a central server by the data acquisition device.

The server generates a file with fund transfer instructions, which will be forwarded to Commercial Bank to credit monies earned, to the accounts of the cardholders. The account holders may thereafter withdraw the money they require from the ATMs of the Bank or at branch counters. Alternatively they can also use the card to pay for purchase of goods and services.

The Integrated Circuit Chip cards procured by Smart Metro carry properties for the payment card application as well as for the tea leaf collection system which is based on FeliCa technology. The NFC technology partner for Smart Metro in this venture is Sony Corporation, Japan.