Riyadh: Afroshingor
The size of the technologies of the financial sector worldwide reached 127 billion riyals, this came during the meeting on the adress “the development of technology and the future of financial sector services”, which was organized recently by the Riyadh Chamber represented by the Investment and Securities Committee, in the presence of a number of interested and specialists in the sector.
Member of the Board of Directors and Chairman of the Investment and Securities Committee, Mr. Muhammad Al-Sayer, confirmed that opportunities are available for investment in financial technology, revealing the qualitative shift and development in this field, indicating at the same time that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has a system of financial technologies emerging and supported by Fintech Saudi Arabia.
On his part, General Manager of the Saudi Fintech Initiative, Professor Nujoud Al-Melaik, revealed that the size of the financial sector technologies worldwide reached 127 billion riyals, according to reports, and that it is expected to reach 300 billion in the year 2020. Nujoud indicated that at the level of the Gulf countries and North Africa, the investment volumes are still In its beginning, and that the investment amounted to approximately 550 million riyals, of which 197 million riyals were obtained in the past year and a half, according to reports.
Nujood al-Melaik said that, according to reports, there are more than 130 companies working in this field at the level of the Gulf and North Africa countries, 30 of which are in Saudi Arabia, stressing that development has become accelerating and investment opportunities are still in the initial stages. Pointing out that the world’s focus on financial technology is primarily on payments, and research has focused on faster solutions to cover the needs in the financial sector targeting ease of the financial technical handling.
The general manager of the Saudi Fintech initiative,Nujoud, explained that with the revolution of electronic commerce, there is a need to compromise the payments system and that electronic commerce platforms dominate the market. She added “ In the meantime the legislative environment is the main gateway to the development of appropriate legislation for the sector and now it includes service providers as well.”
For his part, the executive director of the Saudi Payments Company, Ziyad Al-Yousuf, stated that the company aims to own, operate, and develop all major national payment systems, to create the infrastructure and operational environment for national payment systems, and to enable all government and commercial sectors to benefit from the services of national payment systems.
The company also seeks through its goals to connect local and international “payment services providers” companies, such as banks and others, in local national networks and payment systems, in addition to implementing clearing and financial settlements between all service providers, and developing technical and operational specifications, that enable all service providers to deal in compatibility to foster innovation.
He stated that the transformation of digital payments enables the competent authorities to carry out automated statistical studies on commercial movement, unlike cash payments, explaining that electronic sales enabled the company to issue instant reports on sales and payments of the Riyadh season recently, and therefore the decision maker has information about the expenses and visitors to the season.
Al-Youssuf revealed a study conducted by the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency “SAMA” that included all regions and governorates in the Kingdom to measure the percentage of electronic financial transactions through a field survey, where the study showed that at the end of last July that 36% of the sales that were completed electronically exceeded the goal of the institution in the year 2022, which amounts to 28% of transactions in the electronic financial sector.
