MICROCAPITAL BRIEF: Genie Enables 14m Bank of Ceylon Customers to Upload Funds for Digital Payments to Retailers, Utilities, Schools, Friends, Family in Sri Lanka

The operators of Genie, an app for performing financial transactions in Sri Lanka, recently partnered with the state-owned Bank of Ceylon (BOC) to allow the 14 million customers of BOC to upload funds to Genie, which can “securely hold credit and debit cards, current and savings accounts and eZ Cash accounts to promote seamless payment experiences.” Genie and the mobile wallet eZ Cash are both services of Dialog, a mobile network operator in Sri Lanka that is owned by the Malaysia-based Axiata Group. Among Genie’s services is to allow payments to 20,000 merchants via QR codes, bypassing the need for merchants’ point-of-service terminals. The eZ Cash service allows payments to mobile network operators, retailers, schools, utilities and individual eZ Cash users. It also enables the receipt of in-bound international remittances and the purchase of automobile insurance at approximately 1,400 retail locations.

BOC Assistant General Manager Aruna Kumara said, “As the premier bank in the country, BOC has taken numerous initiatives towards digitising payment experience and shouldering the national responsibility of achieving economic prosperity and social development via financial inclusion and digital adoption across all sectors including the grass root level of the society. By joining these two institutions together and enjoying the synergies, we believe that BOC Internet Payment Gateway (IPG) will help Genie to reach millions of smartphone users who can pay directly with any payment option from anywhere thus driving digital payment adoption and encouraging financial inclusion across the nation.”

For the fiscal year 2019, Dialog reported total assets of LRK 176 billion (USD 951 million) and 15 million customers. Genie reports handling transactions totaling LKR 2 billion (USD 11 million) since its inception in 2018. In addition to Malaysia and Sri Lanka, Axiata operates in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan and Thailand, serving an approximate total of 150 million customers.

Established in 1939 in Sri Lanka, the BOC offers a range of commercial banking services from 627 branches in Sri Lanka plus one location each in India, the Maldives, the Seychelles and the UK. For the 2019 fiscal year, it reports total assets of LKR 2.4 trillion (USD 12.9 billion), deposits of LKR 2.0 trillion (USD 10.7 billion), gross loans of LKR 1.6 trillion (USD 8.8 billion), return on assets of 1.4 percent and return on equity of 10.3 percent.

By Simrun Kothari, Research Associate

Sources and Additional Resources

Dialog press release
https://www.dialog.lk/genie-partners-with-bank-of-ceylon-to-enable-multi-bank-internet-payment-gateway-solution

Genie homepage
https://www.genie.lk/

Bank of Ceylon homepage
https://web.boc.lk/boc/index.php

Dialog homepage
https://www.dialog.lk

Axiata homepage
https://www.axiata.com

Bank of Ceylon financial reports
https://web.boc.lk/boc/index.php?route=information/annualreport

Dialog 2019 financial reports
https://www.dialog.lk/dialogdocroot/content/pdf/annual_reports/2019-annual-report-financial-reports.pdf

More MicroCapital news on the Bank of Ceylon
https://www.microcapital.org/microcapital-story-sri-lankan-bank-of-ceylon-to-open-more-branches-focused-on-small-and-medium-enterprises-and-microfinance/

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