The Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) revealed that the Kingdom witnessed the highest adoption of contactless payments through Near-Field Communication (NFC) with 94 percent, the biggest in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).
SAMA explained that the Kingdom’s successful adoption of contactless payments is part of the apex bank’s strategy, which builds on the goals of the Kingdom’s Vision 2030’s Financial Sector Development Program (FSDP) that aims to reduce cash transactions while increasing electronic payments to 70 percent by 2025.
The Saudi Central Bank has been actively endorsing NFC payments since 2016 to meet objectives, taking strategic efforts to authorize and enable e-payment transactions while maintaining the greatest level of security in compliance with international standards and best practices.
The Central Bank further stated that the necessary infrastructure for NFC payments has been established in close collaboration with Saudi Payments, payment service providers, and banks in order to provide unified and compatible specifications that make these transactions accessible to all.
The nationwide payment ecosystem was redesigned, with all bank cards and point-of-sale (POS) terminals being replaced, as well as ensuring that all gadgets support the NFC technology.
A number of key initiatives that have laid the way for the rapid adoption of contactless payments in Saudi Arabia included the Saudi Central Bank’s decision to increase the NFC transaction limit from $26.6 to $80, and enabling payment through smart devices, as well as the National Anti-Concealment program’s decision urging all commercial activities to install POS terminals.
This is in addition to public awareness activities to introduce NFC payments to the general public and dispel misconceptions about their security. The Saudi Central Bank also stated that public transit projects and the Riyadh Metro project would adopt NFC in their payment operations, in a step that will align the Saudi public transport system with the latest payments technologies.
The announcement of Saudi Arabia’s ranking in contactless payments adoption was first made in a whitepaper published by Saudi Payments, a fully-owned subsidiary of the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA), in partnership with Visa, the world leader in digital payments.
The whitepaper, titled ‘NFC Contactless Adoption in Saudi Arabia 2020,’ also reviewed NFC adoption in the European Union (80 percent), Hong Kong (79 percent), and Canada (76 percent), besides MENA, where Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had an adoption rate of 81 percent.
