To understand what lies ahead of a digital banking industry in Saudi Arabia, we must first understand what has come before.

There have been many advancements over recent years and, throughout my career, I have been fortunate enough to work at the forefront of these emerging areas, involving some of the most important institutions in Saudi Arabia today.

Through my work with Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority (SAMA) we are leading digital change across banking, stepping up to build a collaborative payments and services strategy that contributes to the maturity of the banking industry by creating and implementing national initiatives.

The result is creating an operating model that enhances the efficiency and competitiveness of the local payments and banking services, while creating macroeconomic impact that facilitates the banking services to citizens and promotes the development of different economic sectors.

While some developments are more technical — we implemented the nationwide IBAN standards to support electronic government payroll — others are less so.

We introduced the payment system (SADAD), fully digitising bill payments in the Kingdom for the first time and SADAD has since become an international benchmark for bill payment systems, winning the United Nations award for Public Service in 2008.

Under the Integrated Payments Strategy 2020, we develop a road map for new services in the Kingdom, as long as 10 years ago. SPAN was relaunched with a new brand name “mada”, new operating model and services including cash back, Atheer NFC, prepaid cards and offline transactions. Further, a real-time payments system is now under development after following comprehensive design activities.

What drives the pace? 85 per cent of those with internet connectivity in Saudi Arabia use it for online banking, a rate higher than in Asia. While simple transactions have migrated online, branches remain relevant and their operations are also going digital.

Innovative ecosystems

As technological innovation disrupts all industries globally, I strongly believe that we as a nation have an extraordinary opportunity to leapfrog the development of our infrastructure and create new and innovative ecosystems in different industries that are digitally empowered. With the government as a catalyst of future investment, we can capitalise on the spirit of youth in Saudi Arabia to support Vision 2030 through a digital banking system that is secure and strong enough to meet the opportunities and challenges of a fully digitised, modern world.

A set of digital services are underway to be introduced to the banking industry in Saudi Arabia. They are;

1. e-Invoicing — digitising the B2B invoices, building it on the SADAD platform that will create efficiency in the payment of invoices in the business community.

2. Enabling of mobile payment — where we will be introducing a mobile payment App to facilitate or to ease the transfer of money between users.

3. We are also enabling the infrastructure with the fit of API to encourage the Fintech evolution globally.

— Abdulmalik Abdulrahman Alsheikh, Senior Advisor, Office of the Governor