Sri Lanka Bank Transfer Fee Calculator — CEFTS, SLIPS & RTGS

Three rails carry interbank rupee transfers in Sri Lanka, and each one has its own price, speed, and cap. The calculator walks the three rails for your inputs, drops the ones that don't fit (amount cap, urgency, business-hours window), and picks the cheapest eligible option. The same logic any teller would apply if they had all nine major bank schedules memorised.

1. CEFTS (Common Electronic Fund Transfer Switch) — instant, 24×7, per-transaction cap of Rs 5,000,000. Free below Rs 25,000 at every CBSL-licensed bank. Above the floor, banks charge a fee capped by LankaClear at Rs 50 per originating transaction. Operated by LankaClear (Pvt) Ltd, owned by CBSL and the banks themselves.
2. SLIPS (Sri Lanka Interbank Payment System) — batch settlement, three batches per business day, last cut-off around 14:30. Same per-transaction cap as CEFTS: Rs 5,000,000. Cheaper than CEFTS at most banks because it's the bulk-batch rail used for payroll runs. Typical fee Rs 15–25.
3. RTGS / LankaSettle — high-value rail operated by the Central Bank, settles each transaction individually within minutes during the 08:00–16:30 window on business days. The customer-payment minimum is Rs 5,000,000 — below this, CBSL routes payments over CEFTS or SLIPS. Each bank sets its own customer RTGS fee; CBSL adds a flat Rs 30 transaction surcharge on top.

The recommendation rule is plain. Among rails the calculator considers eligible for your amount and urgency, pick the one with the lowest total fee. If two rails tie, prefer the faster settlement. That's why the cheapest pick can flip from CEFTS (Rs 50, seconds) to SLIPS (Rs 25, next business day) the moment you say overnight settlement is fine — Rs 25 per transfer × 12 transfers a year is Rs 300 that doesn't need to leave your pocket.

Where the numbers come from

The two ceilings the math leans on — the Rs 5,000,000 per-transaction cap on CEFTS and SLIPS, and the Rs 5,000,000 customer-payment threshold for RTGS — are published in the LankaClear CEFTS rules, the LankaClear SLIPS procedural rules, and the CBSL LankaSettle operating procedures, all linked in the Sources section. The Rs 25,000 fee-free floor for CEFTS comes from CBSL Payments Bulletin guidance asking banks to keep retail electronic payments accessible to the smallest payers. The per-bank fees are quoted from each bank's own digital-banking tariff page; the LAST_VERIFIED date at the bottom of the calculator tells you when each was last cross-checked.

What this tool deliberately does not cover

Cross-border wires (SWIFT, Wise, Payoneer, Skrill) go through a completely different rail with FX conversion baked in — the freelancer USD-LKR earnings calculator handles that comparison. Card-network fees, JustPay merchant fees, ATM cash-deposit charges, and cheque-clearing CITS fees all belong to different rails with different audiences; building them into one calculator would make every output a footnote. Live bank-API rate scraping is also out of scope — the bank schedules here are a hand-maintained snapshot, updated each quarter and patched within 48 hours when a tariff change is reported.

Edge cases the calculator handles deliberately

Five boundary cases are worth flagging. (1) Amount exactly at Rs 5,000,000— still inside the CEFTS and SLIPS caps; the rule is inclusive on the upper bound. One rupee more flips to RTGS-only. (2) Same-bank transfer — the calculator returns the intra-bank free path and shows the rail alternatives as context only, since CEFTS/SLIPS/RTGS aren't touched when both legs sit on one bank's ledger. (3) Amount below the Rs 25,000 free floor — every rail option still computes, but the CEFTS fee tile reads "Free". (4) Over-the-counter submission — each bank's branch add-on stacks on top of the online fee for every rail, so the comparison reflects the realistic number you'll be charged. (5) "Other licensed bank" — when you bank with one of the smaller licensed banks we haven't hand-verified, the calculator uses the LankaClear and CBSL ceilings as the worst-case fee, so the answer is honest rather than optimistic.

Sanity check against the LankaClear ceiling

Every fee the calculator returns is reconciled against an independent function, ceftsFeeUpperBoundByLankaClearRule, that reproduces the rule from the LankaClear CEFTS schedule — Rs 0 below the free floor, Rs 50 maximum above it, and refusal above the per-transaction cap. If a per-bank fee ever exceeded the gazetted ceiling, the calculator would surface it. Today no row in the schedule above does.

Three scenarios that map to the most common real-world Sri Lankan transfers, worked end-to-end. Type each one into the calculator above and the recommended rail should match exactly.

• LankaClear — CEFTS (Common Electronic Fund Transfer Switch) rules and member fees
• LankaClear — SLIPS (Sri Lanka Interbank Payment System) procedural rules
• Central Bank of Sri Lanka — LankaSettle (RTGS) operating procedures
• Central Bank of Sri Lanka — Payments & Settlements bulletin and fee schedules
• Bank of Ceylon — SmartPay digital banking tariff
• Commercial Bank — Online banking schedule of charges
• Hatton National Bank — Digital banking fees
• Sampath Bank — Online banking tariff
• National Savings Bank — Electronic banking tariff

Per-bank fees and rail ceilings were last cross-checked on 2026-05-17. The page is reviewed every quarter, and patched within 48 hours of any reported tariff change.