FROM BARTER TO BLOCKCHAIN:

DR. NIMAL RATHNAYAKE CHARTS SRI LANKA'S BANKING JOURNEY

- BY IFHAM NIZAM

The sun slants through the high windows of Seylan Bank’s head office, catching on shelves stacked with old ledgers, rare coins and brittle newsletters. Sitting amid these treasures, Dr. Nimal D. Rathnayake — senior banker, researcher and self-styled custodian of the island’s financial memory — looks more like a historian than a man who signs off on billion-rupee transactions.

“Banks are the backbone of the Sri Lankan financial system,” he says with a smile. “They provide liquidity to the economy and reshape the risk profile of assets.”

He speaks with the easy authority of someone who has spent decades both practising and studying the craft. Over a long conversation he takes me from ancient monasteries to fintech startups, tracing how Sri Lankans have saved, lent and transacted for two millennia.

Ancient roots: coins, monasteries and trust

In the beginning there were no banks — just barter. “Trade was mostly goods for goods,” Dr. Rathnayake explains. “Over time, coins like the Kahapana appeared between the 3rd century B.C. and the 1st century A.D.” Gold doubled as currency and a store of wealth.

Even then, people looked for places to keep their surplus. Buddhist monasteries, under the Niyamatana system, stepped into that role. “They accepted deposits of grain, pulses and currency, lending them out at interest to fund religious life and community welfare,” he says. Long before the word “bank” entered Sinhala, the idea of trusted intermediaries was already here.

Dutch order, British expansion