General Questions

What is PayHere?

• PayHere is Sri Lanka's 1st Central Bank approved Aggregated Internet Payment Gateway Service that enables your business to conveniently accept Online Payments locally or globally from your customers all around the world. It's a single Online Payment Solution for Sri Lankan Businesses to get paid online via multiple local & global online payment methods available in Sri Lanka.

What are Online Payments?

• An online payment is a payment you can receive remotely through Internet. Your customer can make an online payment to you by entering their credit/debit card, mobile wallet or bank account credentials on a secure web page called an "Internet Payment Gateway". An online payment gets approved immediately in few seconds if your customer has funds in their account, and you will receive the funds directly to your local bank account.

Why Online Payments?

• Compared to the traditional payment collection methods such as cash, cheques & bank deposits, online payments allows you to accept or collect a payment instantly via the Internet, which is convenient to you as well as to your customers. You, as a business, do not have to wait weeks or months to collect payments as its instant. Your customer does not have to waste their time to handover you cash, write you cheques or go to a bank to deposit your payment, it's now just few clicks for them.

Who's behind PayHere?

• PayHere Online Payment Service is offered by Sri Lanka's Pioneer Financial Technology Company, PayHere (Private) Limited in partnership with licensed local banks under a Central Bank approved special payment acquiring model regulated by CBSL PSD Direction No.1 of 2018.

Why PayHere for Online Payments?

• PayHere is Sri Lanka's most secure, affordable & feature-rich Internet Payment Gateway Service to get paid Online.

• Unlike other payment gateway services which allows you to accept only one or two online payment methods, PayHere allows you to accept all local & global online payment methods available in Sri Lanka through a single Online Payment Solution. So you don't have to go through the hassle of integrating payment methods one by one & managing them in different portals at different rates. You have everything under one roof with PayHere.

• Also unlike traditional payment gateways which require very complex low-level technical integrations, PayHere offers you very simplified methods to accept online payments such as Payment Links, Shopping-cart Plugins, Checkout APIs & Mobile SDKs. For example, you can even accept an online payment without having a website via PayHere Links.

Who can obtain PayHere services?

• Any Business entity in Sri Lanka can apply for a PayHere Business Account. See Application Process on how to apply for the prerequisites for applying.

How much we need to pay for applying?

• Nothing. PayHere has no application fees or initial setup fees, unlike traditional payment gateways. It's completely FREE for you to apply for a PayHere Business Account (Apply Now).

What are the service fees?

• Once your PayHere account gets approved, you can choose a Service Plan as per your business need. PayHere has 3 flexible plans from no monthly fees (PayHere Lite), to higher limits (PayHere PLUS) & advanced features (PayHere PREMIUM), so you can choose the best one for your business & upgrade or downgrade your plan anytime as per your need.

What are the payment methods supported by PayHere?

• Card Payments

  • Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, Diners Club

• Bank Account Payments

  • HelaPay (100% Sri Lankan Digital Payment Method)

• Mobile Wallet Payments

  • Frimi, Genie, iPay, Q Plus, Sampath Vishwa

• More payment methods will be added by the time & any online payment method available in Sri Lanka will be supported

What are the currencies supported by PayHere?

• PayHere supports accepting online payments in following currencies.
  • LKR (Sri Lankan Rupee)
  • USD (United States Dollar)
  • GBP (Pound Sterling)
  • EUR (Euro)
  • AUD (Australian Dollar)

How secure is PayHere?

• PayHere takes security very seriously & have taken maximum efforts to ensure highest security for both Businesses & Consumers.
• PayHere is built on a Central Bank approved payment acquring model with bank-level security standards & hosted on our partner bank's servers with bank-backed security standards. All Network communications between the end-users & PayHere are encrypted & secured over an SSL layer, certified by an EV SSL Digital Certificate that provides the highest available digital authentication. Card credentials are processed securely on PCI DSS Level 1 certified secure bank backends.

How can we accept online payments with PayHere?

• If you just want to accept an Online Payment even without a website, such as collecting a payment for an Invoice or sell on facebook, Messenger or WhatsApp, use PayHere Links, the simplest method. It allows you to get paid online by simply sharing a PayHere Payment Link with your customer.

• If you have an eCommerce website built on a shopping-cart platform such as WooCommerce, OpenCart, Magento, PrestaShop or Shopify, simply install our PayHere Plugins for your shopping-cart platfom & configure it. Zero coding.

• If you have a native website or a web application where you want to integrate in code-level, use our simple APIs. PayHere Checkout API for one-time payments or PayHere Recurring API for recurring payments or Subscriptions.

• If you have a native mobile app, use PayHere Android SDK & PayHere iOS SDK for a seamless integration, that enables you to accept an online payment within your app.

Does PayHere support Recurring payments or Subscriptions?

• Yes. We exclusively support Recurring payments & manage the Subscriptions for you. Please see Recurring Billing for more details.

Does PayHere offer Automated payments or Tokenization?

• Yes. We do support Automated payments (tokenization) & manage the Preapprovals for you. Please see Automated Charging for more details.

How can our customer pay us with PayHere?

• Your customers can pay you with their preferred payment method which they already have, such as their credit/debit card, mobile wallet or bank account. They just have to enter the credentials of existing payment methods such as card number & CVV on a secure web page (payment gateway) to make you the payment. No need to create account or anything.

Do our customers need to have a PayHere account to pay us?

• Not at all. Your customers can directly use their existing payment instruments such as credit/debit cards, mobile wallets or Internet Banking credentials to pay you in seconds.

What happens when a customer pays us with PayHere?

• When your customer makes you a payment, several things happen in real-time.

  • You will instantly receive a Payment Notification from PayHere via Email.
  • Your customer will also recieves a Payment Receipt from PayHere via Email.
  • If you've integrated PayHere with your website, the website will receive a Payment Notification via a HTTP callback, so it can update its databases as payment received if you've implemented such.
  • The payment will also get updated in your PayHere Account under 'Payments' tab, which you can monitor anytime later by signing in to your PayHere account.

• You can issue your goods or services to your customer as soon as you receive the Payment Notification in any of the above methods, since it ensures that your customer has been charged.

When we will receive the payment funds to our bank account?

• Online payments you receive via PayHere gets automatically settled to your bank account at each day-end as daily payouts on a T+2 settlement cycle (2 days after receiving Payment Notification).

Are there any payment limits for PayHere Accounts?

• Yes. There are per payment limits & monthly payment limits depending on the Service Plan you select. Please see Payment Limits for more details