- To improve the Kingdom's financial ecosystem, Saudi Payments, under the supervision of the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) with IBM (NYSE:IBM) and Mastercard (NYSE:MA) has launched Saudi Arabia's instant payments system 'sarie'.
- 'sarie' supports all Saudi banks across the Kingdom and its introduction is in line with Saudi Arabia's Financial Sector Development Program (FSDP), which targets achieving 70% non-cash transactions by 2030.
- Saudi Payments has selected IBM Global Business Services (GBS) to lead the project as the System Integrator (SI) partner and a leading end-to-end digital payments solutions provider and Mastercard's innovative and secured real-time payment technology for the rollout by Saudi Payments, enabling people and businesses in the Kingdom to send money instantly.
- Maria Medvedeva, Vice President and Country Business Development Lead, Saudi Arabia, Mastercard, said, "Saudi Arabia is an important market for Mastercard, and we anticipate that with this real-time payment system going live in the MEA region, many doors may soon open for ongoing innovation, both in the Kingdom and further afield. The initiative can significantly contribute towards digitizing and modernizing transactions in line with the goals of Vision 2030, and can also help increase the efficiency of the financial systems and offer consumers access to a wider range of financial services, positively impacting the Saudi economy and its citizens."