An Internet Payment Gateway (IPG) enables a seller (also known as 'merchants') to accept payments from customers for the sale of its products. Once the customer furnishes payment details, the system processes the same online and authorizes payment instantly. An IPG while having high security features would be totally automated and authorizes payments without any human intervention.

The iPay solution uses internationally accepted ISO8553 standard to communicate with the banking system. All requests for authorization are protected during data transmission using Secure Socket Layer (SSLv3) technology. The iPay software component at the bank's end authenticates all merchant sites sending requests for authorization using X.509 Digital Certificates and Public Key Infrastructure (PKI).

Faiq Faaiz, Director iBusiness Development at Interblocks speaking on the project said, "This project is very significant to us in many ways. This is our first project and we deployed this at a Sri Lankan Bank making it the first Internet payment gateway in the country clearing payment cards in Sri Lankan Rupees. Earlier merchants were dependant on internationally hosted gateways and were unable to pass on any benefits to customers because trading was in US Dollars. Now we can say that we have truly enabled e-business in Sri Lanka and created an opportunity for our merchants to compete both locally internationally."

The iPay suite has been designed with both the merchant and the bank in mind. The merchants has the option connecting to the bank and obtain a linked page to accept card details through iPayLink; or incorporate a fully customized page to its website using iPayClient.

The iPay Merchant Management Console provides merchants with tools to carry out administration functions like transaction reports, change profiles and even cancel or reverse transactions.

The iPay server has also its share of benefits to the bank. Its Administration Console provides the bank with a comprehensive merchant management, system and user administration tools. The bank does not need to rely on Interblocks to link new merchants to the system but instead simply access Internet merchant accounts creation options.

Dinesh Rodrigo, Managing Director/CEO of Interblocks added, "We are very happy that iPay has a strategic importance to our country. Our product has been built on the next generation technology and can be matched against any other international IPG's. That is why a global technology company with high involvement in financial services is talking to us to OEM or re-license and sell our software. iPay will not stop here, our dedicated R&D is committed to continuously innovate and improve the product to the next level".

Ranjith Narangoda, Assistant General Manager (Systems & IT Development) of Sampath Bank speaking on behalf of the bank said, "We are very happy with the results. We chose Interblocks because we had a clear identity of the people behind Interblocks and because of their experience with similar applications in Singapore. Personally I always wondered how they managed to put together a brilliant team. Each of the team members had specific expertise in various areas and they worked with very good team spirit. This is why we not only were able to develop the product but also test it and launch it in 18 weeks."

Nalinda Jalathge, Project Manager of the iPay Implementation Team speaking of the project said, "Our constant progress reviews paid off. We wanted to become the first and so we had a limited time to develop this. Also due to our quality assurance tests we minimized the bugs greatly. As a new organization the challenge was not only to put the technology together but also to blend into a team as we all came from different fields from different organizations and I think we managed this well. The commitment from the Sampath Bank team was tremendous and so we were able to ensure a smooth delivery."

Interblocks is a comprehensive e-business solutions company formed in August 2000. The company markets iSuite - a rich product suite comprising Internet based procurement, auctions, multi-supplier catalog system, an Invoicing/Bill Presentment and Payment System and Supply and Distribution chain management systems. Application Software developed by Interblocks is J2EE compliant and fully XML based thereby enabling compliance across all major platforms and e-business standards, using industry leading application servers such as iPlanet Application Server, IBM Websphere and BEA's Weblogic.