Sri Lanka’s NPP returns to focus with a new look
The National Payment Platform ( NPP) project suspended in August 2017 is returning with a completely new outlook in the next few weeks. It will be within the regulations of the Payment and Settlement Systems Act No 28 of 2005 and in line with the requirements of the Central Bank ( CB), Deputy Minister of National Policies and Economic Affairs, Dr. Harsha de Silva said.
This NPP is to be devised by integrating traditional and nontraditional payment and settlement systems while separating business messaging from financial messaging, he told the Business Times.
Financial messaging will be the scope of the CB while business messaging will be the scope of various other innovative entrepreneurs’ ventures, he said adding that marrying traditional and nontraditional systems will not be an easy task, but progress has been made in identifying a couple of alternatives.
The NPP is a platform that can be used to develop applications to facilitate digital payments with the working of the core NPP platform, the payment gateways of banks, and digital payment applications.
When a person makes a transaction online, the digi- tal payment applications would take his or her details like the name and credit card information.
After it has collected this data, it would utilise the NPP core platform to send it to the payment gateway of the relevant bank.
Once the bank has received this information, its systems would transfer the money between the relevant accounts accordingly.
NPP is capable of sending secured messages – be it for day to day tasks like settling utility bills or for transferring funds for purchase of goods and services, sending goods refunds, for billing, invoicing – the whole gamut of e commerce functions.
It will help the government to offer citizen services and businesses both big and small to engage in digital commerce, Information Communication Technology Agency (ICTA) sources said.
Dr . de Silva noted that they have re- evaluated the whole previous NPP and came to a conclusion that it cannot be implemented under the present circumstances.
The reason for this decision was that the NPP has to do with payment and settlement with the involvement and approval of the CB, he explained.
He pointed out that he held several rounds of discussions during the last few weeks with top officials of the CB and ICTA with the aim of finding a mechanism to ensure all regulations and processes are duly followed.
“At the same time it has to create opportunities for innovative systems of entrepreneurs to utilise emerging avenues in digital commerce,” he said adding that the CB is very rule- based and traditional whereas the markets world over are extremely dynamic, non- traditional and aggressive.
“So to marry these together is a fairly difficult exercise,” he revealed noting that they have made progress in finding solutions towards this end.
The final agreement will be reached on this matter within the next few weeks, he disclosed.
A payment platform is an essential piece of infrastructure for e-commerce to flourish in a digital economy where buyers interact with sellers online.
It gives consumers, businesses and government departments a platform to make fast, versatile and data- rich requests for payments to meet the evolving needs of a 24/7 digital economy.
It securely delivers the payment request message to respective banks real- time, allowing banks at their discretion to clear and settle simple or complex payment solutions between two people or many.
It can simplify payments, as well as offers the ability to include more information with payments, such as text or links to externally hosted documents.