Sri Lanka’s central bank has confirmed it has received an invitation to join the R3 Consortium, a collection of financial institutions focusing on the so-called distributed ledger technology.

Speaking to local news resource Lanka Business Online, Niki Ariyasinghe, Project Strategy Director at R3, said that a preliminary meeting focused on “developments” in the Blockchain sphere.

“The meeting with Sri Lanka’s Central Bank was about developments in Blockchain technology, what R3 is doing and we also extended an invitation to the Central Bank if they would like to join.”

“From a regulatory perspective there are no charges or anything like that because we want them involved [...] We had a very positive discussion with the Central Bank Governor and we will follow up in the coming weeks.”

Earlier in March, the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation became the first regulatory jurisdiction to join R3.

While the company ostensibly focuses on the potential for private, centralized Blockchain technology to streamline the banking sector, R3 recently appeared to have lost its way, purposely shifting the focus away from Blockchain and removing the term from its literature.

The most striking example came during a presentation for its Corda open-source platform, where the company wrote that it “didn’t need” a Blockchain at all.