LankaClear, the National Clearing House of Sri Lanka has made arrangements for banks to extend their cheque deposit cut-off times from April to make cheque payments more convenient in the country.

As a result of upgrading IT infrastructure, LankaClear is now capable of extending the cheque submission time to 7:00 p.m. thus facilitating the banks to extend their cheque deposit cut-off times. This will be effective from April 1, LankaClear (Pvt) Limited Operations Head, Harsha Wanigatunga told Daily News Business.

The company has improved its Settlement Clearing Cycle where cheque return data is provided to the Banks by 1:30 p.m. enabling them to release funds to their customers within the Banking hours on T+1.

This efficiency improvement was made possible by the data transmission for the Settlement Clearing Cycle being online from Monday and with digital signatures for greater security. These improvements have benefited to the end customer as the Disaster Recovery (DR) capabilities have been greatly improved creating a more reliable cheque clearing system, he said.

The launch of the Enhanced SLIPS (Sri Lanka Interbank Payment System) last year was a great success. It is the first paperless, online and highly secured retail clearing system that connects all Commercial Banks via the LankaClear Vitual Private Network (VPN) with end-to-end digital signing.

He said that the enhanced SLIPS was primarily implemented to cater for higher volumes that are expected due to rapid economic growth and to facilitate same day clearing (T+0) thus enabling customers to get good value for fund transfers on the same day.

There has been a commendable growth in SLIPS transaction volumes and around 18 percent annual growth was recorded last year. With the introduction of same day clearing (T+0), it has been observed that the third party customer transfer volumes have increased substantially.

LankaSign, the first financial sector Certificate Service Provider (CSP) operated and managed by LankaClear launched two new products Email/Document Signing Certificates and SSL Server Certificates in February. The company expects that with the introduction of these new products greater security for financial transaction can be achieved and move towards a Greener environment.

“These improvements to the clearing systems will enhance the capacity of payments industry in Sri Lanka to serve all sectors of the economy to support the higher growth path of post-war Sri Lanka,” Wanigatunga said.

LankaClear, has continuously enhanced the Cheque Clearing System (Cheque Image and Truncation System (CITS) to meet the market growth and to create greater efficiency to serve the public in a better manner.

http://www.dailynews.lk/2011/03/16/bus01.asp

LankaClear has introduced the following value added services to Banks. Introduction of this value added service to CITS participant will expedite the process of Bank wise sorting and customizing the CRNs by printing the presenting bank customer details, Bank logo and delivering CRNs to Banks doorstep.