Over the past few days, the new payments law and its services were approved. This new law is an important tool in the payments industry and its impact on economic movement at all levels will be broad. The law defines payment systems as a set of tools, procedures, and rules that are concerned with processing and settling payment orders and related clearing operations, whether inside or outside the Kingdom. As for payment services, they were defined as services related to the implementation, transfer or processing of money payments and payment tools, in addition to transfers and electronic cash payments via payment platforms or tools. This law was passed to secure and ensure the integrity and efficiency of the infrastructure for payment programs and services in Saudi Arabia, in addition to protecting the rights of the parties that deal with these payment programs, systems and services. One of the most important benefits of this law is its encouragement of innovation and support for fair competition in the operation of payment systems and the areas of providing their related services. Because the application of such a law depends largely on the efforts made in regulation, supervision and control, the Central Bank will handle these tasks. It also has additional powers in determining the conditions and controls for issuing licenses and capital requirements for payment system operators and payment service providers, and then issuing the required licenses and approval of services provided by operators as well as their regulation. The Central Bank also has the power to determine the controls for assigning tasks and using third parties to operate the payment systems or provide payment services, as well as to set special classifications and controls for the payment systems according to the degree of importance. The law also stipulates several duties that payment system operators and payment service providers must abide by, in accordance with what the executive regulations will detail soon. The most important of these duties are the availability of benefits on an appropriate and fair commercial basis, the separation of funds in transit received through them for the benefit of members, customers and consumers — from their own amounts of money — and maintaining the confidentiality of information and data of members, customers and consumers. This was an introductory overview of this new law. In our next article, we will discuss the most important details of the violations stipulated and the controls and limits of issuing payment orders.