Digital Payment Apps (Fintechs)in Sri Lanka

EMOHTONAYISAL
Sep 8, 2018 · 3 min read

Sri Lankan payment application base which has recently shown tremendous growth potential is still in its infancy in terms of penetration. Traditionally Sri Lankan payments space moved forward because of peer pressure and confined to banks and NBFIs. If one bank did something other bank wanted to either match or do one better, this created growth but failed to match the speed in which the world was changing.

But now there are new players in the market and they are challenging the status quo of these established players. Most of these “Old players”are feeling the pressure because internally they face many challenges in adapting to the new new agile culture. Fintechs have a faster response time and a flat org structure which enables them to experiment in a rapid speed.

In this article we will only focus on Fintech Apps. To start with,


UPay by Payment Services Pvt. Ltd

if you are in Colombo and if you are in to these Digital way of living, Upay is really hard to miss. They have been in the market for over 1+ years and they do bring a good game to the table. the application it self has better UX than your normal Internet banking and the payment options they provide you with are quite nice. Recently they have started selling Dippers also :) . you can save your card and bank account number for easy payments.

Download Count 10,000+ / Avg rating is 4.6 which in really good.

PayMaster by Pay Master Solutions Pvt Ltd

Focused on Mobile reloads, this is once of the simplest apps in the market. Using this you can just about reload any mobile which is prepaid. it takes less than 10(s) to get a reload if your card is tokenized on this app. Rumor has it that they are expanding to other payments. Main advantage is that every reload you do, you get a cash back ( you can accumulate the cash as loyalty points and use the points to buy reloads at no cost). How cool is that. Currently they only have card payments but that also is using Master card and its very easy. This is a app to have in your phone regardless if you are a post-paid user. For a change they have the work Pay in front of the name than at the back… which gives a clear message on what this app does.

Download Count 10,000+ / Avg rating is 4.4

iPay by iPay Pvt Ltd

This app comes with a separate merchant application also. While the features are really nice, point to highlight is that they have put up a good looking website. Marketing at the moment is very low key. Ipay seems to have a clear business model for the merchant based transactions. You can link your card and bank account for payments.

Download Count 1000+ / Avg rating is 5.0

DirectPay by DirectPay-Sri Lanka

DirectPay has been in the market for over an year. We think they are planning to bring their “A” game very soon. Design is a bit basic and you cannot really blame them for that because Sri Lankans (outside of Colombo) really don't care that much about UX. For the average local, if it’s getting your work done…. its good enough. Take pick me driver app for that matter. So we hope DirectPay will be a nice addition to you app collection.

Download Count 100+ / Avg rating is 5.0

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