Sri Lanka Targets One Million QR Transactions a Month

COLOMBO (News 1st); Chief Advisor to the President on the Digital Economy, Dr. Hans Wijesuriya, has called for collective responsibility from service providers, financial institutions and consumers to accelerate the adoption of digital payments in Sri Lanka, stressing that the foundations for rapid growth are already in place.

Speaking on the expansion of the country’s digital payments ecosystem, Dr. Wijesuriya said adoption ultimately rests with both providers and consumers, but emphasised that the primary responsibility lies with those delivering and facilitating digital services. He said it was essential to ensure that the digital experience for citizens is frictionless, enjoyable, rewarding, convenient, reliable and readily available.

According to Dr. Wijesuriya, if these conditions are met, the existing gaps in adoption can be closed very quickly, as the core infrastructure is already established. However, he noted that a key challenge remains in changing long‑standing behaviours, including how customers transact with merchants, salespersons, family members and within their everyday financial interactions.

He said it is the duty of those driving the digital economy to create clear pathways for all such engagements to move into the digital space, making them cheaper than cash, more convenient to execute and highly trustworthy and reliable.

He stressed that focusing only on individual transactions would not be sufficient to bring about lasting behavioural change.

Instead, Dr. Wijesuriya highlighted the need to look beyond transactions to entire ecosystems and networks of financial flows. This includes examining supply chains, how small‑scale merchants source goods, whom they pay, and how money flows in and out of wallets and cash registers across the country. He said these flows must be made worthwhile, convenient, cost‑effective and profitable for all parties to fully transition into the digital space.

Addressing the public directly, Dr. Wijesuriya urged citizens to experiment with digital payments, adopt them and believe in the system. He said the Government of Sri Lanka stands firmly behind the development of the digital economy, with banks and financial institutions actively supporting and driving the national digitalisation programme.

He revealed that stakeholders have collectively set a target to increase current QR transaction volumes from around 90,000 transactions per month to 900,000, or approximately one million transactions per month, within the next six months. He described this goal as achievable, noting that QR technology is already widely trusted in Sri Lanka.

Dr. Wijesuriya pointed out that the QR‑based fuel pass system currently facilitates around 800,000 transactions per day, while credit card usage amounts to approximately nine million transactions per month, or roughly 300,000 transactions per day. These figures, he said, demonstrate that citizens already trust QR technology and engage in close to a million QR‑enabled transactions daily.

He noted that by building seamless digital experiences and addressing entire financial ecosystems rather than isolated transactions, Sri Lanka can rapidly scale up QR adoption and advance its transition towards a fully‑fledged digital economy.