Saudi Arabia will soon launch e-payment platforms in its quest for advancing commercial transparency, said Ziad Al-Yousef, the Director General of Payment Systems at SAMA. The Kingdom aims at attracting leading financial technology (fintech) companies and plans to become a cashless society, said a SAMA official on Sunday. Yousef’s remarks were made at a lecture organized by the Chamber of Commerce in Riyadh on Monday evening. He stressed that Saudi Arabia is the only country in the region with an integrated payment system. “The most important thing enjoyed by the Saudi banking system is its factor of independence and compatibility, which protects the Saudi economy, the banking sector and traders from geopolitical shocks,” he added. Saudi Arabia’s banking system does not rely on the assistance of external and global systems, while still incorporating technical controls compatible within world banking systems and ATMs. Yousef said that Saudi Arabia is working on three basic payment systems to connect banks and pay bills. He added that SAMA and banks have spent huge sums to improve the quality of banking services. Areas improved include reducing purchase processing time through points-of-sale from 30 seconds in 2010 to only two seconds today. The number of point-of-sale terminals, such as credit or debit card payment facilities at shops, increased to 303,464 across Saudi Arabia in 2017 from 225,372 in 2015. “It is expected to surge to 526,889 units by 2021,” he said. SAMA will launch within the next two months a strategy to lead the Gulf Arab state towards a cashless society by 2030, said Al-Yousef. Services will be launched to enable individuals to make purchases and payments within and outside the Kingdom securely. Yousef pointed out that the recently launched online purchase service through MADA cards is currently available through six banks, and will include all banks soon.