(From left) HNB Head of Card Operations, Tissa Nanayakkara, HNB Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer Dilshan Rodrigo, LOLC Finance Director & Chief Executive Officer, Conrad Dias, LOLC Finance Head of Consumer & Digital Business, Hasala Thilekaratne and LOLC Finance Chief Manager Consumer & Digital Business Dihan Rodrigo.
Sri Lanka’s largest private sector retail bank, HNB PLC, announced a landmark partnership with the country’s largest non-banking finance institution (NBFI), LOLC Finance PLC to serve as its settlement bank for the Company’s recently established card payment services.
“HNB is proud to serve as the exclusive settlement bank for LOLC Finance. Through this milestone partnership between two of Sri Lanka’s giants in banking and finance, we will be providing payment processing support for all credit and debit card transactions made by LOLC Finance cardholders. Given their vital role as the largest NBFI, we view this partnership as a valuable opportunity to support the expansion of cashless payments and access to credit to the grassroots of the Sri Lankan economy,” HNB Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer, Dilshan Rodrigo stated.
Settlement banks are a primary component of the transaction process, helping to make electronic transaction processing available for merchants. Through the new agreement, LOLC Finance will now route all of its credit card transactions through HNB’s settlement account for foreign and local transactions.
“We are the very first NBFI in Sri Lanka to obtain a Payment Card - Acquiring license from the Central Bank and from Mastercard worldwide and Visa International. We are also the country’s first NBFI to obtain the Primary/Principal License from Mastercard worldwide and Visa International to issue Credit Cards and Acquire Payment Cards. Especially given that the majority of our customers are from the bottom of the pyramid, we are grateful to HNB for rapidly establishing this partnership so that we are now able to reach out to our customers and provide them greater convenience and flexibility in the management of their finances whilst fulfilling their aspirations for a better standard of living,” LOLC Finance Director and Chief Executive Officer, Conrad Dias stated.
LOLC Finance PLC is a premier licensed finance company in Sri Lanka and is the flagship finance company of the LOLC Group. The company is focused on bridging the gap between aspiration and achievement based on the foundation of uncompromising quality, total customer satisfaction and unparalleled financial expertise, enabled by strategic alliances aimed at empowering the grassroots.
With 252 customer centres across the country, HNB is one of Sri Lanka's largest, most technologically innovative banks having won local and global recognition for its efforts to drive forward a new paradigm in digital banking. The bank has continuously won prestigious accolades including being declared the Best Retail Bank in Sri Lanka for 2020 by the Asian Banker Magazine for the eleventh occasion in addition to being the highest ranked privately owned commercial bank in Sri Lanka by the prestigious Banker Magazine Top 1000 global rankings 2020.
Locally, HNB leads the Business Today Top 10 rankings and also claimed seven awards at the Best Corporate Citizen Sustainability Awards 2019. HNB is the first Sri Lankan bank to obtain an international credit rating and is rated on par with the sovereign by Moody's Investors Service. The national long term rating of HNB was revised upward by two notches to AA+ (lka) recently by Fitch Ratings (Lanka) Ltd.
