An independent study examining the economic impact of increasing the use of digital payments in major cities around the world, including Colombo, it was found that Colombo could achieve, US$ 200 million annual net benefits. This survey conducted by Roubini Thought Lab and commissioned by Visa.
“Colombo, with a population of 694,000 and GDP of US$ 6.5 bn, could gain US$ 200 million annual net benefits by moving in to digital payments,” said Joe Cunningham, Chief Risk Officer, Asia Pacific, Visa in Colombo yesterday.
Estimated catalytic impacts for the city over the next 15 years include 20.4 basis point increases in GDP growth rate and 2.1% increase in employment.
Joe urged that there were significant benefits of going less cash and said that Sri Lankan stakeholders should move towards a less cash economy. On e-commerce, Joe opined that creating a secure payment ecosystem was critical to the success of the nascent eCommerce market in Sri Lanka.
Worldwide, E-commerce activity has been growing at over 5% YoY over the past five years, and is estimated to top USD 27 trillion by 2020. Emerging economies in Asia Pacific expected to drive a bulk of these sales, where consumers are increasingly shifting to digital experiences. Digital commerce is also being transformed by the advent of connected devices.
He also disclosed that eCommerce frauds now total US$ 57.8 billion across eight major industries across the world. “Consequently, there is a strong need to ensure security mechanism both at a policy front (reliance on global standards) and technical front (Chip and pin, tokenization etc),” said Joe.
Even in countries where con-tactless payments are used widely, fraud at the point of sale has remained at historic lows. In the UK, fraud losses on cards from January to June 2017 decreased 11% from the same period in 2016. (SS)
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