The launch of Saudi Arabia’s first instant payments system is another step towards the kingdom’s ambitious proposals to have a 70 percent cashless society as part of the Saudi’s Vision 2030, according to Takreem El-Tohamy, general manager, IBM Middle East and Africa.
Saudi Payments has collaborated with IBM and Mastercard to launch ‘sarie’, which is the Arabic word for ‘fast’.
Saudi Payments has selected the services and consultancy arm of IBM to lead the project as the system integrator partner and end-to-end digital payments solutions provider.
Under the new system, bank customers will be able to send and receive money in real-time using a wider range of services and transfer options. Customers of local banks can make instant transactions of up to SAR20,000 ($5,300), while users can benefit from the quick transfer service to send up to SAR2,500 ($660) using aliases, such as mobile number, email address, ID number, or IBAN number.
El-Tohamy told Arabian Business: “This is the step of moving more and more into a cashless society. Definitely this is a big step forward encouraging people, small companies, big companies and banks to move towards this direction.”
The collaboration is aligned with Saudi Payments’ aim to improve the kingdom’s financial ecosystem, mainly through the adoption of faster payments and improvements to banking reconciliation.
“This is not just a step forward for the payment industry or just the financial services, I see the impact of it is more and more to all industries who use payments. This will really transform and stimulate the economy,” said El-Tohamy.
“This is one aspect of digital transformation in the financial services. The move of financial services to the cloud, for example, is really a big step and something like this would encourage that. The financial services is a conservative industry, it’s very highly regulated, so the use of digital innovation is always scrutinised and banks go in at the right time. I see that this is a step that will encourage the financial industry to move towards other aspects of digital transformation, like the cloud for financial services, for example.”
Takreem El-Tohamy, general manager, IBM Middle East and Africa
The payments landscape is transforming and the platform economy is expected to expand to nearly a third of all global commerce by 2025, according to data from the IBM Institute for Business Value.
Sarie supports all Saudi banks across the country and is available for use by their customers.
El-Tohamy said: “The response has been overwhelming. The fact that all the banks in Saudi Arabia have participated in the programme is an early sign that shows that this is something that will add into the financial services industry and will also stimulate the economy.”
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