ECONOMYNEXT – The use of point of sale terminals and transactions have steadily picked up over the past year, as the economy recovered from a currency crisis in 2022, official data show.
The use of POS terminals make it easy to collect value added and other sales taxes.
The number of POS terminals went up from 114,011 in 2023 to 131,029 in 2024, a report from the central bank shows.
The average transaction volume which fell from 547 in the first quarter of 2022 to 494 in the third quarter of 2022 had picked up to 679 by end 2023.
By end 2024 it was 733.
Average value of transactions per POS terminal rose from 2,390,000 in 2022 to 3,471,000 in 2024.
In 2022 inflation surged, and the value may be linked to price rises created by macroeconomists.
Point of Sale (POS) terminals were introduced to Sri Lanka in 1994, and allow customers to make payments through credit, debit, charge and stored value cards at merchants’ outlets.
By the end of the fourth quarter of 2024, 10 licensed commercial banks, 2 licensed finance companies and 1 non-financial institution acquiring cards were licensed to function as financial acquirers of payment cards, according to the central bank data.
In 2013, the central bank directed licensed financial acquirers of payment cards to upgrade their POS terminals with the Terminal Line Encryption technology to increase the security of payment card transactions.
In 2014, it instructed financial acquirers to ensure that merchants acquired by them do not engage in double swiping, merchants swiping payment cards in devices other than POS terminals provided by financial acquirers, to protect cardholder data from unauthorized use. (Colombo/May15/2025)
