The Banking Executive Magazine - February 2022

The Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) an- nounced on Thursday that the share of electronic payments in retail busi- ness exceeded 57% of the total trans- actions conducted in 2021, surpassing the 55% target set out by the Financial Sector Development Program (FSDP), one of the main programs of Saudi Vision 2030. Fahad Almubarak, Governor of the Saudi Central Bank, said that SAMA was working on promoting elec- tronic infrastructure, expanding elec- tronic payment activities and accelerating the electronic transfor- mation of transactions. He said this most recent achieve- ment was driven by the Financial Sector Development Program and the implementation of the Bank's strategic plans for the payments sec- tor, primarily aiming to reduce de- pendency on hard currency, and increase the rate of electronic pay- ments to 70% by 2025. Almubarak also noted that joint ef- forts between the government and private sectors to increase payment choices and implement many pay- ment digitization initiatives together with private sector innovation and expansion initiatives as well as open- ing financial services to a new class of FinTech stakeholders in the King- dom all played an instrumental role in making this achievement possible. SAMA also noted that there were several jumps in the number and value of payments made through the National "mada" payment system during these past few years, with the number of transactions made through this system exceeding 5.1 billion transactions during 2021 at a growth rate of 81% compared to 76% recorded in 2020. SAMA also observed a sizable in- crease in the number of PoS terminal numbers and commercial sector cov- erage. More than a million PoS ter- minals were deployed by the end of 2021 compared to 721,000 termi- nals deployed by the end of 2020. Contactless Payments (NFC) methods also witnessed a tremendous in- the BANKING EXECUTIVE 50 ISSUE 158 FEBRUARY 2022 SHARE OF E-PAYMENTS IN SAUDI ARABIA REACHES 57% IN 2021, EXCEEDING FSDP TARGET