Leverages IBM Power Systems and IBM DB2 PureScale to enhance customer experience, increase security, high availability and system performance

Author: Riza Wadood, Country General Manager, IBM Sri Lanka

LankaClear is the operator of Sri Lanka’s National Payment Network – LankaPay.  The company has been at the forefront of revolutionizing the country’s banking and financial services sector by bringing the best-of-breed solutions to Sri Lanka’s national payment infrastructure while keeping innovation and advanced technology at its core.
 

Incorporated in 2002, LankaClear’s has aimed to empower every Sri Lankan with faster, convenient, secure and affordable payment solutions thereby creating financial inclusivity. 

Some of LankaPay’s signature products include Common ATM Switch, the revolutionary payment product which has enabled any peer-to- peer or corporate payments between any LankaPay member bank or financial institution, in real time, 24x7x365. Another breakthrough payment product of LankaPay is JustPay which allows customers to make retail payments using smart mobile devices by transferring funds from their current or savings account to the merchant’s account directly.

Considering the depth and breadth of digital products & services that were offered by LankaClear, as well as a growing customer base and the criticality of its operations, it was important for the company to provide a safe and consistent client experience. Therefore, LankaClear chose to continue leveraging the time-tested IBM Power Series to upgrade its infrastructure. IBM Power Series are widely leveraged across the financial services industry and are known for providing business agility, data protection and unmatched performance for a frictionless hybrid cloud experience. 

One of the highlights of the upgrade was that the refreshed infrastructure was sized to handle 8 years forecasted growth with reduced processing times. Also, driving it further was the proven past experience of high service delivery confidence maintained by 100% uptime.

Prior to this implementation, LankaClear has been leveraging IBM Power Series with the DB2 PureScale cluster for around nine years while maintaining 100% infrastructure availability.

“Being the backbone of Sri Lanka’s payment industry, facilitating all interbank transactions, it is critical for us to ensure that all our systems continue to maintain the highest levels of security standards, reliability and high availability. Therefore all our systems are deployed using cutting-edge technology and state-of-the- art infrastructure that are tried and tested across the world,” said Dilantha Samarasinghe, Head of IT – LankaClear. “To address the new age banking requirement of the customers, we moved our core Payment switching operations to IBM Power System S924 (9009-42A) and IBM Flash System 7200 along with IBM DB2 PureScale solution to ensure better security, availability and robustness.”

LankaClear chose South Asian Technologies Ltd (SAT), the only IBM Platinum Business Partner in Sri Lanka, as its partner for the project. The company has distribution operations in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and the Maldives and works with a partner network of over 150 companies.

As Sri Lanka’s retail digital payment industry progresses to the next level, having a robust infrastructure built on IBM Power Series helps in securing high availability of infrastructure and enhanced processing times. This boosts the confidence placed on LankaClear by its stakeholders including the nation’s leading banks and financial institutions. The implementation also serves a greater purpose benefiting the citizens of Sri Lanka by enabling continuous availability of LankaPay’s services.