Sampath IT ties-up with Paycorp to enhance Payment Card security
Stakeholders in the Payment Card Industry in Sri Lanka comprising of banks, financial institutions, merchants and card holders are to witness the security aspect of their payment card information enhanced, commencing first quarter of 2013, Mirror Business learnt.
For this purpose, Sampath IT, a fully-owned subsidiary of Sampath Bank PLC recently entered in to a service technology partnership with Paycorp, an Australian-based enterprise payment processing solutions provider.
“We facilitate Sampath IT/ Bank with ‘Hosted Payment Pages’ where Paycorp will securely manage the application, accept the card data (credit and debit cards) entered by the cardholder and authorize the transaction with enhanced security on behalf of Sampath Bank.,”said Mazeen Farook, Managing Director of Business Payment Services (BPS), Paycorp’s fully-owned Sri Lankan subsidiary..
At present, this payment gateway process is outsourced to foreign companies by Sri Lankan banks at higher transactions fees draining foreign currency. Hereafter this can be carried out locally by BPS, a Sri Lankan based Knowledge Process Outsourcing Company which set up operations under the Board of Investment (BOI) with an initial investment of Rs.546 million (US $ 4.2 million).
Furthermore, a server will also be set up in Sri Lanka for the first time in the payment card industry history, which can fully process the ‘card not present payments’ carried out through either telephone or internet via Visa, MasterCard & Amex.
“Additionally, services such as Mutli Currency Payment pages, Fraud Mitigation Engine, Tokenisation Solution, IVR/ Phone payment Solution, Receivables Management System, E-commerce Transaction Systems will also be provided”, Farook remarked.
The partnership will allow a Visa credit or debit card holder to transfer funds directly into another person’s Visa credit/ debit card anywhere in the world in realtime through a system known as Original Credit Transfer.
Speaking on the strategic alliance, General Manager of Sampath IT, S. Muralidharen disclosed that, in addition to extending these services to Sampath bank’s clients, they would also introduce and sell these services to other financial institutions and merchants whose transactions involve electronic cards in the country as well as in the Asian region as the service is offered as SAAS (Software as a Service) which can be integrated into any bank or merchant in any country.
“We host ‘secure payment pages’ which are customized to meet merchants’ needs. The transactions are directly processed on our own PCI-DSS-compliant servers where card information will be scrutinized in real-time thus eliminating middlemen between banks and transaction processors. Payment Gateways will be hosted on servers physically located in Sri Lanka for the very first time,”explained Suren Attanayake, Director Operations at BPS stressing that Paycorp has the highest PCI-DSS compliance level in the industry.
Commenting on the partnership, Paycorp and BPS Chairman John Caliguri said, “Paycorp is committed to making a significant difference on the long-term performance of Sri Lankan banking and corporate clients.”