Payments at Pace

Saudi Arabia’s payments sector is changing faster than any other area of the financial services sector driven by advancements in financial technology and evolving customer expectations

The global payments landscape is undergoing significant and disruptive change two and half years since the outbreak of the pandemic, which saw the volume of digital payments soaring to record highs and generating as much as 10 years’ worth of growth in just 30 months.

The payments space is changing faster than any other area of the financial services sector driven by advancements in financial technology and evolving customer expectations that have shattered the status quo and opened the window for new players that are challenging incumbent banks.

Amit Sharma, the Head of Payment Operations at SABB said that the wave of change that is being witnessed in Saudi Arabia’s payments sector over the last one and a half years is unprecedented and it has not been seen “probably in other countries in the region.”

According to KPMG, for companies, new technologies, products and communication channels as well as increased competition between banks, fintechs and service providers, are opening up ever new ways of making and orchestrating payments. However, these developments are also forcing regulators and governments to keep pace with this rapid change and enact corresponding sets of rules and laws.

The growth of non-banking players such as super-apps, e-commerce firms, merchants and social media platforms that are offering instant payment services is disrupting and driving rapid changes in the sector.

Industry experts say for incumbent banks, the traditional main providers of payments services, to maintain a competitive edge in the evolving payments industry, success will depend on how they assess capabilities, determine the role of the service in market strategies and align operations to achieve the required performance improvements.

MEA Finance, in partnership with Volante Technologies, hosted an exclusive roundtable themed Modernization of the Payment Landscape in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where industry experts from the financial services sector shed some insight on how financial services providers can leverage the cloud, payment infrastructure, data and open banking to broaden their payments services.

Volante, a US-based cloud payments and financial messaging solutions provider works with more than 100 banks, financial institutions, market infrastructures, clearinghouses, and corporate treasuries to accelerate their digital transformation. The company counts Citibank, Qatar Islamic Bank UK, BNY Mellon, Bank Leumi UK and FIMBank among its customers.

Abdulaziz Abanmi, VP -Technology, Acting VP - Operations and Shared Services at Saudi Payments said, in his opening remarks, that the growth

Abanmi also identified innovation in products and services as well as talent strategy as two elements that are crucial to ensure sustainable growth in the payments space. Growth in the payments sector is receiving a boost from the ongoing shift towards subscription-based billing—a boon for the region’s paymentsas-a-service (PaaS) and software-asa-service solution (SaaS) providers. McKinsey said that open source software, serverless architecture and SaaS have become must-haves for technology players and legacy banks launching new fintech businesses.

The booming e-commerce industry is also critical to the success of digital payments because it directly enhances the customer’s checkout experience.

The prolonged pandemic pushed more shoppers online and together with evolving customer preferences as well as demands among the young tech-savvy customer base, it is driving a surge in global payments volumes.

THE WAVE OF CHANGE THAT IS BEING WITNESSED IN SAUDI ARABIA’S PAYMENTS SECTOR OVER THE LAST ONE AND A HALF YEARS IS UNPRECEDENTED AND IT HAS NOT BEEN SEEN PROBABLY IN OTHER COUNTRIES IN THE REGION

– Amit Sharma

in the payments industry in 2021 “was remarkable by all means if compared to the achievements in 2018. “If we take mada for example, in 2018 we celebrated one billion transactions a year. While in 2021 we crossed more than five billion transactions only in medallions, not to mention other payment players,” said Abanmi.

The remarkable growth in Saudi Arabia’s payments sector, thanks to the collaborative efforts of all the players in the industry with the supervision of the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA), is something that “we all actually feel proud about,” he added.

Payments modernisation

Global financial institutions have undergone various efforts to modernise their payment systems over the past decade, driven by the technological innovations in the industry that are expected to continue driving disruptive business models in the payments space globally.

The changing customer behaviours and reimagined customer experiences, intense regulatory environment as well as payments innovators who are backing open and standardised platforms such as Square and its peers are driving the biggest disruptions in the payments ecosystem.

Domenico Scaffidi, the Vice President of Global Industry & Regulatory Affairs at Volante in his opening remarks highlighted on the modernisation of the payments ecosystem, the standardisation of the industry as well as the benefits of Independent Sales Organisation (ISO) and how industry partners such as SWIFT are supporting the growth of the sector.

Scaffidi said that one of the pain points for larger banks in cross-border payments is high costs as an average transaction cost as much as $40. He also identified limited access or lack of visibility as another challenge while noting that not all financial institutions can offer the service to their clients such as private, multinational corporates and big conglomerates.

Other drawbacks for banks are lack of speed and transparency in crossborder payments, given that on average a transaction takes between three and seven days let alone the unavailability of tracking messages as well as information to give an institution’s clients.

However, SWIFT unveiled SWIFT Go in July 2021—a new service that enables small businesses and consumers to send fast, predictable, secure and competitively priced low-value cross-border payments anywhere in the world, direct from their bank accounts. Together with SWIFT Global Payments Innovation (GPI), the service enables financial institutions and their clients with tracking messages to understand the status of payment as well as when the payment has been credited to the beneficiary account.

Volante said through partnerships it seeks to understand a client’s new business model, how to get fresh revenue as well as formulate a new strategy and new added-value services built on the technology that it offers.

Scaffidi said a survey of the global payments sector by Finastra showed that the cost of cross-border payments is high due to a lot of manual intervention. “Cross-border payments are very costly, very expensive, it’s not a good deal for the bank,” he said.

The first phase of modernisation in the payments space saw financial institutions consolidating channel and payment client-facing applications and the next phase is currently underway in which institutions are aligning to various global standards including ISO20022 and open banking.

The traction and the migration to ISO 20022—the new payments messaging choice for real-time systems—are evident in the payments industry but then, the reality is what a bank can build on top of that technology such as creating new value services, said Scaffidi.

Volante’s Scaffidi said that around 80% of CEOs in the payments

IF WE TAKE MADA FOR EXAMPLE, IN 2018 WE CELEBRATED ONE BILLION TRANSACTIONS A YEAR. WHILE IN 2021 WE CROSSED MORE THAN FIVE BILLION TRANSACTIONS ONLY IN MEDALLIONS, NOT TO MENTION OTHER PAYMENT PLAYERS

– Abdulaziz Abanmi

industry are really worried about the transformation currently underway in the market while citing PwC—one of the company’s advisors that are supporting it in understanding the changes in the financial services sector.

Omar M AlMarek, Senior Manager FCC OPS at SABB, said that the number of instant payments in Saudi Arabia has significantly increased. “Within the Vision 2030 framework, I have realised that there’s a lot of changes, not only on the payments fronts, but the digitalisation of all the government services and payments, enhancement internet speed and upgrading of payments infrastructure

to make sure it is ready for the future of the industry,” AlMarek said. He said the kingdom previously used to have only two service providers but now it has IBS, from BUNA and AFAQ.

S&P Global said that it expects key lessons from the pandemic to spark an enhanced focus on payments infrastructure modernisation in 2022 as merchants look to accommodate operational shifts such as accelerated e-commerce growth as well as new customer demands including contactless payments that have continued to accelerate over the past 30 months.

Gulfan Shaikh, the Senior Payments Manager at SABB concurred with AlMarek saying that while we are focusing more on the growth of the payments industry in Saudi Arabia, one aspect that the financial services sector needs to look out for is preventing assisting the ecosystem of fraudsters. Shaikh said that preventing the vulnerability of the systems is key to the success of the payments ecosystem and “I think as an organization, we have to focus there a lot.” Focusing on efficiency, Sachin Puthran, SABB’s Sr Payments Product Manager - Global Liquidity & Cash Management said that the industry has seen unprecedented evolution starting with cheques—wherein payments are cleared in a few days and electronic fund transfers used to take few hours. However, with the advent of solutions such as IPS, “we have raised

the bar to records not seen before for customers to receive payments in seconds and that’s exactly the requests we are getting from clients.”

However, considering these use cases Puthran said that there is a need for quick implementation of payments verification and account verification to build confidence with our customers. “What is happening and what we’ve seen towards the beginning when IPS was launched, customers were a little bit hesitant that their transaction will take more time,” he said.

From a modernisation point of view, Sido Bestani, the Managing Director, Middle East Africa India Sub Continent at SWIFT said that the modernisation of the fragmented payment landscape remains a top priority. Bestani said that there has been a lot of innovation in the financial sector over the years driven by the advancements in financial technologies and as we live in a globalised world, the focus in the future will be on interoperability and interlinkages of all the systems.

Onur Ozan, Regional Head - Middle East, North Africa and Turkey at SWIFT weighed in saying that payment modernisation is taking place on the traditional systems such as real-time gross settlement (RTGS) and automated clearing house (ACH) across the Middle East region and “one thing that is common that we observed is that most of these

new systems being introduced or being modernised are on ISO 20022.”

“We also have a good number of IPS systems in some payment schemes being introduced in the region. Globally, I think the number is around 80’s and Saudi Arabia is an excellent example where the infrastructure is currently being used and even overlay services are being discussed,” Ozan added.

From a challenger bank perspective, Saeed Albuhairi, the CEO of Tweeq said that there are two factors driving growth in the country’s payments sector including Saudi Arabia’s youthful population, which makes up a third of the Gulf state’s entire population. Albuhairi said this techsavvy customer base’s demands and expectations are ever-changing and “they are underserved a little bit and basically

as an e-wallet service platform we can address their requirements much better.”

Driving innovation

The payments industry was rife with activity last year and 2022 is promising to be another busy year with continuing transformation underway in the payments market and an array of strategic opportunities coming into focus. For, Houssam Chaker, Regional Head of the Middle East at Volante Technologies, no matter how much digitisation is happening all players in the region’s payments ecosystem including

Saudi Payments, SWIFT, Mastercard and Accenture are working towards delivering the needs and expectations of the client.

Tushar Gaur, Sales Director, Middle East and North Africa at Volante, weighed in saying the future of payments is already here although it is not evenly distributed. However, “we are going on the journey because of the whole ecosystem in place,” he said.

Gaur gave an example of how SWIFT is also learning from the developments in payments saying the Belgian firm said ISO is important because clients know where their money was going. “They understand there is a starting point and there is an endpoint, but the whole transaction has to be open in place because clients have the right to know. And they brought ISO to the whole ecosystem of their 10,000 customers and beyond touch points,” said Gaur.

From a growth perspective, Faisal AlYousef, the Chief Business Officer at Alinma Bank, noted that sustainability is one of the most important points to ensure that the industry will grow while remaining innovative in the future.

Al Yousef, who is overseeing the building of a fintech and payments

“WITHIN THE VISION 2030 FRAMEWORK, I HAVE REALISED THAT THERE’S A LOT OF CHANGES, NOT ONLY ON THE PAYMENTS FRONTS BUT THE DIGITALISATION OF ALL THE GOVERNMENT SERVICES AND PAYMENTS, ENHANCEMENT INTERNET SPEED AND UPGRADING OF PAYMENTS INFRASTRUCTURE TO MAKE SURE IT IS READY FOR THE FUTURE OF THE INDUSTRY.

– Omar M AlMarek

company for Alinma, said that establishing a fintech company and ensuring financial sustainability considering the expenses and costs to establish such a company is not an easy task. Ensuring sustainability, not only from the regulator and the operational backbone of payments in Saudi Arabia but also from the private sector, entrepreneurs as well as big techs, fintechs and incumbent financial institutions is of great importance.

“We have to come up with innovative ideas, not just incremental innovation, such as what we are seeing at the moment, but leapfrog where we are formulating business models that can unlock new revenue streams and change the cost structure of payment companies,” he added.

Maria Medvedeva, the VP & Country Lead, Saudi Arabia & Bahrain weighed in saying sustainability means “tackling cash and it’s tackling the commercialisation aspect for all ecosystem players.” “We are a $1 trillion cash industry here, but the flow company consists of $310 billion, another $310 billion goes into the personal consumption expenditures, $350 billion is the government and $250 billion is for business to business,” Medvedeva said.

Adding to the growth and modernisation perspective, Yagoub Yousef AlSulaiman, Alinma’s Head of Transformation Management said that the Gulf state has made significant strides with the Saudi Arabian Riyal Interbank Express (SARIE) system being the core member of the payments space. The system is also being extended to the growing fintech ecosystem allowing them to manage payment schemes.

AlSulaiman added that fintechs are not taking away business from banks, incumbent financial institutions remain in the loop as all payments are directed somehow to the bank.

When asked about his opinion on change and innovation in the industry, Omar AlHamda, the Head of Cards & Retail Payments at Arab National Bank, said payments enablers are driving significant innovation in the sector and Saudi Arabia’s youthful population is getting all the services through the enablement of fintech companies and all the banks operating in the country. “We have seen the young generation looking for better and better services, which until now, we believe we have provided a good part but they look for much more,” said AlHamda.

Abdulrahman Al-Khereji, Bank Al Jazira’s Senior Program Manager, said that banks mandate to educate their customers about the digital payments systems as part of their strategy to

eliminate the use of cash and paperwork in settling payments.

Jim Mortimer, Senior Consultant, Real-Time Payment at MasterCard acknowledged that Saudi Arabia now has a fantastic asset that can transform the country’s payments industry. However, Mortimer said to transform the country, some challenges lie ahead while noting that the most friction still exists in business-to-business and crossborder payments. “That’s where the most challenges lie in terms of coming together and developing solutions that will address those challenges and move the country forward,” said Mortimer.

Fatima Alabdulkareem, Enterprise Applications & Payments Transformation Leader said that the enablement of instant payments in Saudi Arabia is a game-changer adding, “even if clients want to transfer huge amounts of money, they can do it frictionless and it will reach instantly.” She called on players in the payment ecosystem including banks, regulators as well as payments enablers and fintechs to ensure that sustainability and innovation remain a top priority.

Saudi Payments’ Abanmi said that previous when a nationwide initiative such as Saudi Payment was introduced it came complete with a playbook that all players in the ecosystem would follow. However, the ready-made end-to-end products era is long gone.

Mohammad Bawazir, the Chief Product Officer at Tweeq, concurred saying that there has been a lot of innovation in banking as well as the fintech landscape is supported by the regulatory framework and the infrastructure in the region.

Creating revenue streams

Software as a service (SaaS) platforms such as UAE-based InstaShop and Careem leverage data to solve customer pain points like offering e-commerce services, managing finances, or scheduling home services and charge a monthly fee to access that service.

Meanwhile, financial institutions create revenue streams by charging clients for payments and payment-

related features or entering revenuesharing agreements with service providers. The combined purchasing power and influence of millennials and Gen Z is reshaping the future of the financial services sector.

American digital payments platform Stripe identified five primary ways to monetise payments and paymentrelated features including charging customers a fee to access payments, marking up each transaction, introducing fees for advanced payment features as well as adding a fee in cases where customers use other payment gateways and charging for advanced, customized reporting.

Irfan Bhatti, the Head of Enterprise Transformation & Delivery at Banque Saudi Fransi said that the adoption of digital payments in Saudi Arabia is phenomenal, adding that considering the demography of the Gulf state, where twothirds of the population is under the age

of 30 and the penetration of technology it is effectively safe to say that banks are in everybody’s pocket.

However, the million-dollar question becomes how can financial institutions in Saudi Arabia leverage the country’s demography? Bhatti said that is something for each bank to consider.

WE HAVE SEEN THE YOUNG GENERATION LOOKING FOR BETTER AND BETTER SERVICES, WHICH UNTIL NOW, WE BELIEVE WE HAVE PROVIDED A GOOD PART BUT THEY LOOK FOR MUCH MORE

– Omar AlHamda

Abdul Haye Ahmad, Banque Saudi Fransi’s Payments Programs Manager, said that the events of the last 24 months together with Saudi Arabia’s demographics have played a crucial role in the unprecedented adoption of digital payments in the country. Haye said Banque Saudi Fransi is delivering services to its clients and customers in a way that meets their requirements as many services and products including real-time payments (RTPs) are being implemented. “The next goal for the bank is how to sustain these phenomenal changes,” he said.

Yogesh Kapoor, the Head of Enterprise Transformation at SABB said that the

financial service sector is driving transformation in the country’s payments space and “serve the customers, whether the needs are local or international.”

Coming from a bank such as SABB, which is part of HSBC, Kapoor said serving clients who have international needs is an integral part of the financial services sector through cross-border payments. He said the bigger question remains how banks transform a country through ease of doing payments in a low-cost, safer and transparent way while adding that these challenges need a collaborative approach to solve them.

Naim Alame, Client Account Leadership Middle East at Accenture, said that the payments division is a great opportunity for financial institutions to extend the revenue stream and scale their product offerings. For banks to reap the real benefits of payment, Alame said the first thing is to innovate the whole experience to make it seamless from a payment perspective.

He also urged banks to transform their core operations to be able to scale up their services as well as collaborate with key players in the payments ecosystem such as e-commerce platforms, e-wallets and neobanks to enhance that seamless experience.

WE HAVE TO COME UP WITH INNOVATIVE IDEAS, NOT JUST INCREMENTAL INNOVATION, SUCH AS WHAT WE ARE SEEING AT THE MOMENT, BUT LEAPFROG WHERE WE ARE FORMULATING BUSINESS MODELS THAT CAN UNLOCK NEW REVENUE STREAMS AND CHANGE THE COST STRUCTURE OF PAYMENT COMPANIES

– Faisal AlYousef

Leveraging the cloud

The rapid growth of cloud-based financial services is offering banks a window to be more innovative and efficient in service delivery, but it is also opening up the industry to new entrants such as fintechs, global retail giants as well as card networks and neobanks.

Al-Khereji projected that the use of cloud-based solutions will help banks serve more clients while eliminating the legacy systems that have been in use for decades. He said that in as much as banks have made significant strides in modernising the payments space, “I think we can improve ourselves from customers and services perspective, by striving to meet clients’ demands using available payment solutions rather than other alternative solutions.

Cloud computing offers a dynamic platform to develop, trial and offer innovative services in the financial service industry—payments included while driving operating and business model transformation. Krishnaswamy Sriganth, the Senior Consultant at Saudi Payments, said that as the major payment system in the country, mada

is building the market infrastructure, which is the backbone of the monetary system and is key to the growth of the country’s economy.

Sriganth encouraged cooperation between banking partners, financial technology solution providers and other partners in the ecosystem “to run along with us at the same speed and ensure that we complete the marathon at the speed of the sprint.”

Meanwhile, Eyad Sawaqued, SAIB’s IT Section Head - Risk, Treasury & Payments, said that Saudi Arabia’s

payments sector started at a very slow pace 20 years ago, but the events of the last two years have accelerated the innovation in the industry.

Hariraj Subramanian, the Head of Cash Management at Gulf International Bank, said that the way financial institutions deliver the core services is going to change in the future, “so banks need to have a bit of a more complex algorithm that works to respond a lot faster to your customers.”

Opening banking

With unprecedented adoption of open banking across the Middle East, legacy banks are slowly losing their tight control of customer data and total dominancy in the payment service sector—which is forcing several financial institutions to carve out their payments portfolios to allow a more flexible approach to growth.

Open banking is playing a significant role in the rise of the open data economy as it makes payments easier and more transparent while loosening incumbent banks’ tight control of customer data and their near-monopoly over payment services.

Saudi Arabia is one example of an emerging regional openbanking microcosm. The Gulf state is

implementing a market-driven strategy, but its approach is inclined towards a more formal regulatory framework though its regulations do not follow Bahrain in requiring the opening up of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)—which facilitate data sharing, or in mandating security standards.

Bhatti said that considering the open banking and banking as a service (BaaS) advancements in the country, the financial services sector has reached a junction where banks are now concerned about how they can sustain the new changes and what needs to happen next.

“I feel, how do we accelerate to that next point is really around the cloud offering,”

Bhatti said adding that customers will determine how banks keep up with progress and innovation to remain competitive in a highly competitive market.

THE REGULATOR IS WAY AHEAD OF US AND ALL THE LEGACY ORGANISATIONS ARE NOW TRAILING. WE ARE TRYING TO FOLLOW UP AND GET TO KEEP UP WITH THE PACE OF NEW PAYMENT REGULATIONS AND NEW PAYMENT INNOVATIONS

– Ayman Abu-Mowis

“The customer base is now demanding something different,” he added. “The mindset is different. And the challenge for any financial institution organisation is how do we look at that twofold?”

Other GCC jurisdictions are also adopting different approaches to payments and open banking as regional regulators are introducing a range of measures to promote and accelerate the take-up of data sharing frameworks in banking. Ayman Abu-Mowis, the Head of IT Strategy and Governance at the Saudi Investment Bank, said that the weighed in saying regulators have been very active. Under Saudi Arabia’s G20 Presidency, the country focused on enhancing cross-border payments across the globe, Garg said while adding that SWIFT GPI and SWIFT Go serve the essential need to enhance faster, instant, frictionless payments across borders.

Garg said that as an international payments system, SWIFT strives to meet the needs of corporate treasurers while at the same time considering the growing demand for mobile banking from techsavvy customers. market is not yet mature for the APIs that are required to enhance the payments ecosystem—a lot of standardisation work needs to be completed within the corporate banking sector.

Raheem Abdul Alshuaibi, the Director of Business Development at Mastercard, said that the financial sector development is the main part of Saudi Arabia’s economic reform agenda Vision 2030 and is being driven by the enablement of a regulated central bank as well as the support of the ecosystem players, including local banks, domestic switch

financial services sector is used to bugging regulators with new products and services all the time, except for the banks more recently.

“The regulator is way ahead of us and all the legacy organisations are now trailing. We are trying to follow up and get to keep up with the pace of new payment regulations and new payment innovations,” Abu-Mowis said.

He added that regulators in the Gulf state are encouraging banks to collaborate with fintechs and not depend on their legacy systems “because they do not think big organizations can catch up with fintechs’ innovative business models.

Huny Garg, Executive Director & Country Head - KSA & Bahrain at SWIFT,

Meanwhile, Rasheed Alshaikh, the Head of Wholesale Payments Country Head for Saudi Arabia at J.P. Morgan Chase noted that when the Wall Street bank started running the payments business in the country it faced regulatory hurdles, but now, “we are trying to catch up.” From a corporate bank perspective, Alshaikh said their view of the payments space is different and corporate clients are keen to have instant payments. Saudi Payments rolled out its Instant Payment System (IPS) last year and they started working on the corporate offering this year, he said.

However, Alshaikh noted that the challenge is with the technology that is being used, adding that the Saudi Arabian Saudi Payments, different schemes like MasterCard as well as different fintechs. Saudi Arabia is spearheading different instant payments initiatives such as mada, Esal and Sarie—all of which are meant to enable service providers and government entities to offer payment facilities around the clock. The surge in technological innovations and the Gulf state’s youthful population are driving unprecedented growth in the payments industry. Volante’s Scaffidi urged Saudi banks to stop investing in black boxes that make the banks compliant with the requirements of the current operating environment, at the tactical level, “but rather what is happening in the long-term strategies,

knowing that the payment ecosystem is changing every day.”

Participants Included: Abdulaziz

Abanmi, VP -Technology, Acting VP - Operations and Shared Services, Saudi Payments; Naim Alame, Senior Payments Expert, Accenture Middle East; Faisal AlYousef, Chief Business Officer, Alinma; Yagoub Yousef AlSulaiman, Head of Transformation Management, Alinma; Omar Alhamda, Head of Cards & Retail Payments, Arab National Bank; Abdulrahman Al-Khereji, Senior Program Manager, Bank Al Jazira; Irfan Bhatti, Head of Enterprise Transformation & Delivery, Banque Saudi Fransi; Abdul Haye, Payments Programs Manager, Banque Saudi Fransi; Hariraj Subramanian, Head of Cash Management, Gulf International Bank; Rasheed Alshaikh, Head of Wholesale Payments, JP Morgan Chase Bank - Riyadh Branch; Maria Medvedeva, VP & Country Lead, Saudi Arabia & Bahrain, Mastercard; Abdulraheem AlShuaibi, Director of Business Development, Mastercard; Jim Mortimer, Senior Consultant, Real Time Payment, Mastercard; Amit Sharma, Head of Payment Operations, SABB; Omar M AlMarek, Senior Payments Manager, SABB; Gulfan Shaikh,

Senior Payments Manager, SABB; Yogesh Kapoor, Head of Enterprise Transformation, SABB; Sachin Puthran, Sr Payments Product Manager - Global Liquidity & Cash Management, SABB; Director, Middle East, Africa and Indian Subcontinent, SWIFT;

Huny Garg, Country Manager, SWIFT; Saeed Albuhairi, CEO, Tweeq; Mohammad Bawazir, Chief Product and Payment Officer, Tweeq; Ayman Abu-Mowis, Head of IT Strategy and

WE EXPECT KEY LESSONS FROM THE PANDEMIC TO SPARK AN ENHANCED FOCUS ON PAYMENTS INFRASTRUCTURE MODERNISATION IN 2022 AS MERCHANTS LOOK TO ACCOMMODATE OPERATIONAL SHIFTS AND NEW CUSTOMER DEMANDS THAT HAVE CONTINUED TO ACCELERATE OVER THE PAST 18 MONTHS

– S&P Global

Fatima Alabdulkareem, Senior Manager IT Development, SABB; Krishnaswamy Sriganth, Senior Consultant, Saudi Payments; Onur Ozan, Regional Head, Middle East, North Africa & Turkey, SWIFT; Sido Bestani, Regional Governance, SAIB; Houssam Chaker, Regional Sales Director, Volante; Tushar Guar, Sales Director Volante; Domenico Scaffidi, Vice President, Global Industry & Regulatory Affairs, Volante; Andrew Cover, Director, MEA Finance