The Journey Towards Frictionless Cross-border Payments

At the recent MEA Finance roundtable debate hosted by Swift in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, discussions focused on how the push to make end-to-end money movement more instant, secure and transparent across borders is driving the payments industry to continuously look to advance customer experience

Global businesses move an estimated $23.5 trillion across borders annually. To do this, they predominantly rely on the wholesale cross-border payment processes of correspondent banking networks, according to Oliver Wyman. This process costs around $120 billion in transaction charges per year.

Cross-border payments are an integral feature of today’s world. They play a vital role in keeping the economy healthy and stable. The payments typically require three to five days of end-to-end processing before reaching the intended recipient and the shortcomings are compounded by high costs, lengthy settlement times and opaque processes.

However, the cross-border payment space is being jolted by several trends that could fundamentally change competitive dynamics. These include increasing pressure from emerging technologies, shifting regulatory and sanctions frameworks, growing e-commerce industry and shifting customer demands.

MEA Finance in partnership with SWIFT hosted an exclusive roundtable themed The Journey Towards Frictionless Cross-border Payments in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The event attracted senior representatives from across the country’s financial services sector who shared insights on the trends that are shaping the future of the cross-border payments sector while exploring new ways to address the complexities of providing secure and ubiquitous payments.

According to Mastercard, reliability, predictability, security and speed are top of the agenda for both customers and businesses, and banks must deliver on all these fronts.

Traditionally, correspondent banking –in which one financial institution carries out transactions on behalf of another, often because it has no local presence - has been instrumental in facilitating cross-border payments.

The push to make end-to-end money movement more instant, secure and transparent across borders is driving the payments industry to continuously look to enhance customer experience. Financial institutions are leveraging partnerships, innovative technologies, multilateral approaches and multi-rail interoperability to make payments faster, more transparent and less costly.

Banks in Saudi Arabia have made headway in expanding their services and are exploring how the new innovative financial technologies can better support their businesses while partnering with other financial institutions to enhance the cross-border payments experience and cut costs for end customers.

Huny Garg, Country Head – KSA & Bahrain at SWIFT, said in his welcome remarks, as one of the largest originators of cross-border payments, Saudi Arabia is not only an important market for the payments network or the banks operating in the country, but it is of strategic importance to other emerging markets where the payments are flowing all the time – whether it is trade or personal remittances.

Ziad Al Yousef, Deputy Governor for Development and Technology at Saudi Central Bank (SAMA), in his opening remarks, said Saudi Arabia is one of the largest remittances countries in the world and the country remains committed to frictionless cross-border payments. Al Yousef said the country worked together with partners during its G20 Presidency to develop an ambitious payments system that addresses speed, cost and transparency.

The G20 made enhancing crossborder payments a priority during the 2020 Saudi Arabian Presidency.

“We have an ambitious target to achieve faster, cheaper, more transparent and more inclusive cross- border payments by 2027,” Al Yousef said, adding that Saudi Arabia agreed with its global partners in 2022 to reprioritise even what the group can focus on to enhance cross-border payments – the ’19 building blocks’.

The 19 building blocks are arranged into five focus areas, four of which seek to enhance the existing payments ecosystem, while focus area E is more exploratory and covers emerging payment the institutions even during challenging times such as the COVID-19 pandemic or ongoing geopolitical issues,” reveals Bhatia.

The company’s cross-border payment portfolio consists of three pillars –foundation, frictionless and instant. Its strategy is underpinned by a strong platform and foundation.

Global payments messaging, the medium by which transactions take place, infrastructures and arrangements. Going forward, Al Yousef believes that new digital tools, among them central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), can address many issues related to efficiency, security and access.

Kalyani Bhatia, Global Head of Payments & PMI Go to Market at SWIFT, opened his presentation by highlighting that SWIFT Go to Market is a group of 30 payment professionals and provides deep product and market knowledge for the payments network’s 12,000 member banks.

“Our mission is to enable instant and frictionless payments around the world account to account, in every market we are present and we have been doing this in the financial service sector since 1973,” said Bhatia.

SWIFT is celebrating its 50th birthday this year. Over the years, the payments network has been revolutionising cross-border payments with SWIFT gpi, bringing visibility and transparency to the global payments space. “We are here to support the financial community and is changing. 2023 is a milestone year for the rollout of ISO 20022, which became the standard for cross-border payments and cash reporting starting in March. Bhatia said ISO 20022 is leading financial institutions on the path to richer and better data.

“Our inflow translation service is supporting global financial institutions on their journey to ISO 20022 at their own pace by providing the new ISO standards in co-existence with categories 1, 2 and 9 of MT messages in November 2025,” she said.

Bhatia said SWIFT ramped up transaction management at the end of May, bringing the orchestration layer to payment processing while moving away from point-to-point messaging. The payments network highlighted that ramping up transaction management will be transformational for the financial service sector as the company is starting to address concerns from a data truncation perspective.

From a frictionless perspective, Bhatia said SWIFT seeks to reduce any kind of friction in the payments chain to achieve straight-through processing times and that is where payment pre-validation comes into play. By analysing SWIFT’s traffic, Bhatia highlighted that 65% of all global payment rejections could have been solved by leveraging upfront account verification to eliminate friction.

“SWIFT also offers case management, which is simplifying the exceptions and investigations process, essentially creating a central and standardised platform to monitor and manage exceptions,” he added.

Finally, the last pillar, instant. SWIFT is facilitating instant processing essentially by increasing speed, transparency and the predictability of payments. According to Bhatia, “80% of all MT103 messages are being sent as SWIFT gpi across the globe, 95% of cross-border payments are tracked and confirmed in less than 24 hours and 50% of these reached the end beneficiary in less than five minutes.”

SWIFT gpi dramatically augmented cross-border payments across the correspondent banking network and for global businesses, for whom speed, certainty and a smooth payments experience are an absolute must.

The payments industry is changing rapidly, with consumers and businesses both demanding more from their relationship with banks. The advent of innovative technologies and evolving customer requirements have heightened the need for banks to improve the process of cross-border payments.

Today, global businesses require their international payments to be equally seamless as domestic transactions.

Sandeep Dhawan, Regional Head of Products, Payments at JP Morgan said to advance customer experience, cross-border payments should be as instant as domestic payments. However, customer expectation from a cross-border payment perspective is slightly different, Dhawan said while noting that payments across borders are expected to be ‘fast’ and if a transaction is settled within three hours customer expectations would have been met.

The growing frustration with the traditional correspondent banking model, which is often considered cumbersome and costly in a world of real-time low-cost payments, has created an enabling environment for the growth of non-bank providers.

Amol Bahuguna, SVP, Head of Corporate Technology, Innovation and Change Management at Riyad Bank concurred with Dhawan saying that enhancing customer expectations will be determined by the service that a banking customer is availing.

From an individual perspective, Bahuguna said for urgent requirements such as payment of children’s college admission, confirmation is upfront. “Visibility makes sense and speed is the need of the hour in such as case, not the cost or not the transparency,” he said.

For corporates, global businesses are not always in a rush all the time,

Bahuguna said while noting that they need visibility as proof to take to the supplier for a settled payment. While from a banking perspective, cross-border payments providers want to make their service as efficient as possible, not as expensive.

“Banks are not just providing payment as a service, but as commercial organisations, they expect to generate revenue from the financial product,” Bahuguna said, adding that if financial institutions provide visibility in terms of having MT103 messages sent to customers, they would have met expectations.

Rida Al-Arnaout, Head of Payment Services Unit at Riyad Bank weighed in saying, “We all know about the customer expectation, we are all customers and we know about the expectation.” However, the million-dollar question is how to improve the expectations, Al-Arnaout added.

Consumers have high expectations and the new innovative technologies are raising them even further, driven by the growing demand for seamless interactions, security at every step and easy access to purchase information.

Ammar Awad Altawiel, Manager of Digital Solutions Delivery at Bank Albilad said the main thing for the customer is the notification and the Service Level Agreement (SLA).

From complaints analysis, Gulfan Shaikh, Senior Payments Operations Manager at SAB, banking customers are frustrated by additional questions that are asked when processing cross-border payments, but the requirement does not apply to domestic payments.

He said there is increasing dependency on correspondent as well as beneficiary banks, making the overall turnaround time it takes at each of these banks longer, which might impact customer experience and regulatory-related issues that can arise along the payments chain. With SWIFT Go, banks are providing instant and frictionless cross-border transactions while enhancing transparency and endto-end digital strong security.

Sheikh Manzoor Sabir, Head of Cash Products, Global Transaction Banking, Gulf International Bank concurred that not every solution is for every customer for every transaction. He said in cases where global corporates have a payroll, they prefer to send the payroll with minimum deductions and on time for the payment to reach the customers’ or the employees’ accounts on time.

In another scenario, banking customers might want to know ‘the status of their payment’. Sabir said they carried out an analysis that showed that for important payments, a customer will likely said cross-border transactions are prone to fraud, money laundering and terrorism financing risks and this is where ISO 20022 comes into play.

The cross-border payments landscape is becoming increasingly competitive and customers’ demands for fast and seamless experiences are higher than ever. Similarly, the push to make end-to-end money movement more instant, secure and transparent across borders has the payment industry continuously looking to improve the user experience.

Correspondent banks are financial middlemen that act as go-betweens in cross-border payments. Crossborder payments are supporting the development of digital economies and are driving innovation all while functioning as a stable backbone for global economies.

Saudi Arabia has always been viewed as innovative and a leader in payments and finance – spearheading the move to a less cash-reliant society while encouraging consumers to embrace different ways to settle payments.

better. Shaikh remains optimistic that ISO 20022 will solve the problem largely by eliminating nearly 90% of the incorrect false hits.

Bader Nasser Al-Hussinan, SVP, Head of Payments Section at Riyad Bank highlighted that additional questions that are required when customers are initiating a cross-border payment as part of compliance requests from the bank. Al-Hussinan believes that SWIFT’s case resolution can help iron out friction and enhance customer experience.

The case resolution service speeds up the resolution of operational, compliance check the payment three times before it reflects in the beneficiary account.

“SWIFT gpi is a fabulous tool and I believe it should have been released many decades ago to augment customer experience in cross-border payments,” he said. “Banks are setting their tools to meet different customer preferences. Faster payments are not a solution for every customer, a full value transfer is not a solution for every customer and SWIFT gpi is not a solution for every customer satisfaction.”

On why cross-border payments are associated with many questions, Sabir

Ahmed Alhadeed, Chief Treasury Officer at Vision Bank said fintech companies are simplifying the process of transferring money across borders and that is what attracts customers’ attention to a financial service provider “vis-à-vis the old ageing models of the past”. “What fintech companies have come up with is a challenge to correspondent banks and the incumbents need to fine-tune their systems and service offerings to maintain a competitive edge in the market,” said Alhadeed.

The emergence of new technologies has shaken the banking sector and new payments initiatives such as BUNA – a payments platform that seeks to deliver the Arab world’s most cutting-edge, crossborder payments system, encompassing multiple currencies and payment types.

Spurred by Saudi Financial Sector Development Programme, innovation is coming faster than ever before in all aspects of banking including crossborder payments where a key trend is a new focus on retail customers and small to medium enterprises.

From a fintech perspective, Onur Ozan, Managing Director / Regional Head provided by the tech enablers to create a superior end-to-end customer experience.

“It is obvious fintech firms are taking market share from incumbents as they are making themselves available to customers of all segments, even the unbanked that the traditional banks it is a 60/40 scenario because fintech companies are gaining market share from customers that move smaller amounts of money, particularly small to mid-sized businesses. Al-Sayed highlighted that 60% of cross-border transactions are being handled by large banks, which

– Middle East, North Africa and Turkey at SWIFT said fintechs are leveraging entrenched faster payment rails to offer seamless cross-border payment services that do not use a legacy system, unlike incumbents. “The absence of the legacy infrastructure associated with incumbents allows fintechs to provide a digital customer journey with few clicks to initiate cross-border payments,” said Ozan.

He also noted that fintech firms remain more competitive when it comes to transaction fees, charging between 0.5 and 2.5% in fees depending on the currency, that traditional banks have been enjoying over the past decades.

Esraa Diwali, Senior Digital Payments at SAB said artificial intelligence capabilities and fintech characteristics will pave the way for the elimination of pain points in cross-border payments while advancing customer experience and streamlining transactions.

Businesses have choices, and so far, they are often finding better crossborder experiences outside the traditional banking channel. Still, incumbents in Saudi Arabia have a real opportunity to evolve into concierges or curators of the best of the fintech world and maximise the tools have not been serving for decades,” said Nawaf Althukair, Head of FI at Vision Bank.

Althukair said fintechs are leveraging seamless onboarding and processing as powerful tools to gain rapid market share and the trend is expected to continue going forward.

“We see prominent fintech companies in the cross-border payments sector such as Wise, Ripple Labs and Rapyd are playing a greater role in connecting countries with seamless processes and they are dealing with multiple currencies,” said Althukair.

Dr Ahmed Darwish Al-Sayed, Head of Digital Delivery at Bank Albilad said are leveraging SWIFT’s innovative technologies while the remaining 40% is being processed by fintechs.

“The disruption in the cross-border payments space is good. It is keeping correspondent banks on their toes to revamp their processes and become better,” Shaikh said, adding that incumbents risk losing a significant chunk of the market share to fintechs.

The new ways to access digital financial services have made the payments ecosystem very efficient, inexpensive and more inclusive. SWIFT’s Garg said the financial services sector is growing and evolving very fast. He highlighted that incumbent banks are not losing market share to fintech but rather there are a lot of business opportunities emerging in the market.

Ganesh Venkatakrishna, Product Manager- Fintech & Payments at SAB said fintech companies have overwhelmingly captured market share foreign exchanges and transfer costs and collaborating with fintech players to enhance offerings.

Cross-border payments can be slow, correspondent banks can be eliminated by standardisation.

The standardisation of cross-border payments is expected to help the global financial services sector to eliminate many of the factors causing friction and SWIFT’s shift to the richer file format of ISO 20022 from incumbent banks, in retail banking, commercial banking or SMEs segment and over the years the customers are losing trust in incumbents and to regain the market share SWIFT is providing traditional banks with innovative solutions.

Promising work is currently underway in correspondent banking networks to boost cross-border payments as part of a broader strategy by G20 countries to augment the global economy. However, progress on this front has been much slower as moving money from one country to another remains slow, expensive and inconvenient.

Aiman Alrabiah, Director of Payment Systems Business Department at SAMA said the cross-border payments market is moving toward a cooperation model as both traditional banks and fintech companies seek to serve clients who fall outside of their core customer bases.

Fintech companies have taken significant market share from traditional banks in cross-border transactions and incumbents have started to fight back. Traditional banks have begun building new cross-border payment interfaces and mobile applications, repricing expensive and risky. However, a multilateral platform to facilitate crossborder transactions, currency exchange and financial contracting such as the ‘X-C platform’ that was envisioned by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and will create a centralised and multi-currency foreign exchange trading environment.

Garg said SWIFT gpi solved the friction with cross-border payments by streamlining but the company is going a step further with SWIFT Go to standardise the format further and make it possible to initiate high percentage straightthrough transactions.

SWIFT is expecting the migration to ISO 20022 to be a game changer. There is limited artificial intelligence that can be applied to an MT103 database, but ISO 20022 can carry 100 times more data, Garg said while noting that it is up to the bank to request as much data as possible from the customer as required through the chain of a transaction. “Standardisation is going to the very next level in the next few years,” Garg added.

Yagoub Yousef Al-Sulaiman, Head of Transformation Management at Alinma Bank weighed in saying the fragmentation and truncation of data formats between will enhance cross-border payments for banks and their correspondents.

Al-Arnaout said MT uses a standardised format and global correspondent banks have been using it for decades, but friction still exists in cross-border transactions. However, ISO 20022 will have enriched data and more information, which is expected to allow for standardisation and elimination of friction.

Meanwhile, Sabir believes ISO 20022 will not eliminate friction in cross-border transactions because what is being standardised is the medium between two banks i.e., the way two financial institutions communicate. “The friction comes when Bank Albilad says that I treat this data with XYZ and Saudi National Bank interprets the data as ABC,” he said.

Dhawan said standardisation is being brought in by ISO 20022 and going forward, harmonisation of ISO formats and harmonisation of APIs is going to play an increasingly important role in crossborder transactions.

A report by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the World Bank and the IMF highlighted that a greenfield approach to cross-border transactions may accelerate the alignment of aspects such as settlement finality, liability regimes and participant onboarding through a scheme managed by a single governing entity.

Ahmed Fadl, Digital Solutions Delivery Manager at Bank Albilad hailed ISO 20022 for bringing standardisation in correspondent banking while noting that with fragmented data to streamline cross-border payment processes and support SMEs by speeding up the transaction process and increasing efficiency and transparency.

The technology leverages distributed ledger technology (DLT) where transactions are recorded with a fixed cryptographic signature called a ‘hash’. An integrated ecosystem such as ‘the

Al-Arnaout said payment market infrastructures (PMIs) have a big role to play to ensure that standardisation can be understood across the industry as well as be extended to all the players in each jurisdiction to make it a global standardisation.

Al-Hussinan said PMIs inside a jurisdiction such as Saudi Arabia will it will be impossible to advance customer experience.

Mohamed Hustafa Ishak, NBE Representative and Country Manager of the National Bank of Egypt said the MT103 format brought a standard in the cross-border payment space and the rich data associated with ISO 20022 will eliminate friction in payments while boosting customer experience.

“The greenfield approach involves establishing a new multilateral platform either as a hub entity to create a hub and spoke system with the existing infrastructures as spokes or as a common platform to replace the existing infrastructures and provide direct access to all participants,” the three entities said in a report in January 2023.

Khalid H. Al Otaibi, Division Manager of Payment Systems Operations at SAMA said the G20 road map is a specific working group that is working on aspects related to interoperability. “One of them is achieving some sort of standardised formats for messages for cross-border payments,” added Al Otaibi.

Blockchain technology is one of the newest payment rails that is helping greenfield approach’ is expected to simplify doing business and reduces risk.

The increased adoption of payments modernisation worldwide, including real-time payments, and straightthrough processes and platforms, are clear opportunities for the sector as global corporates seek to build better customer experience.

play a critical role in completing the order of payments.

PMIs have a critical role to play in facilitating the end-to-end tracking of cross-border payments. According to SWIFT, more than 55 PMIs are already delivering value for their members by exchanging gpi payments and enabling domestic exchange and tracking.

For PMIs to boost standardisation, Abdul Haye Ahmad, Payments Programs

ON THE G20 ROADMAP. AT SWIFT, WE ARE SPENDING A SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT OF TIME ON THE RECOMMENDATIONS FROM THE BANK FOR INTERNATIONAL SETTLEMENTS, THE INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND AND WORLD BANK

– Huny Garg

Manager at Banque Saudi Fransi said it is going to be a community effort. He highlighted that currently, the use of ISO 20022 is equivalent to MT103 as most of the banks are not ready to migrate to the new standard.

“The issue currently is the data. We have a tool and it is a very basic tool and at current implementation what we and AFAQ System were pilot projects for many years within the GCC before the two initiatives came to fruition over the past 18 months. “Comparing with other global payments initiatives, BUNA and Arabian Gulf System for Financial Automated Quick Payment Transfer (AFAQ) System are probably the most innovative partly because of the technologies such as application programming interfaces (APIs) and DLT are revolutionising the financial service sector from payments to open banking and these innovations will enhance financial services and products.

From instant payments to CBDCs, a have is equivalent to the MT standards,” Ahmad said, adding that until the data is being fed properly into the message, the system will not be able to leverage the data.

With Saudi Arabia halfway through its multi-trillion-dollar economic transformation and diversification strategy under Vision 2030, cross-border payments offer a compelling revenue opportunity, driven by growing trade activity, expanding e-commerce and a constructive regulatory agenda.

Aiman Alrabiah, Director of Payment Systems Business Department at SAMA said the G20 Roadmap identified three themes that will have a significant impact a profound impact on cross-border payments. “Standardisation of data, as well as interoperability of payment system, are key to achieve frictionless in cross-border payments,” said Alrabiah.

Al-Sayed said BUNA and AFAQ System are regional answers to the pain points in cross-border payments and correspondent banking.

John O’ Donovan, Payment Systems Business Department, Advisor at SAMA concurred with Al-Sayed, saying BUNA guarantee given by the central banks,” O’ Donovan added.

The growth and innovative developments in the country’s financial services sector are fertile conditions for new entrants, which have built market share by offering highly functional and cost-efficient services.

Khalid AlQassem, Head of Product and Innovation at Banque Saudi Fransi said although financial institutions are investing in innovative technologies to make their payment solutions desirable, customers, both big and small, are yet to derive value from these services. “Customers have not yet obtained any value from incumbents’ payments services and products, hence the reason why most customers are moving to fintechs,” he said.

From an integration point of view, Afnan Mohammed Al Ghamdi, EVP, Head Payment Operation Shared Services Group at Saudi National Bank said the current operating environment calls for financial institutions to consider segmentation and the different business requirements.

Kaya Al Zamil, Senior Digital Payments at SAB weighed in saying innovative wide range of new and emerging digital technologies holds the potential to transform the face of the cross-border landscape, alongside the industry-wide transition to ISO 20022.

Dhawan said having a frictionless and instant payment platform (IPP) is one of the prerequisites to joining the G20 roadmap and Saudi Arabia is much ahead of the curve because the country already has an instant payment service in place while other regional countries such as the UAE are set to go live with their IPP this year.

From a commercial bank perspective, Dhawan called on the banking ecosystem to study the report that was released by the BIS, the IMF and the World Bank, which seeks to establish whether and how multilateral platforms can bring meaningful improvements to the crossborder payments ecosystem.

ISO 20022 is emerging as a common language and model for financial messages across the world. SWIFT projected that 80% of global, high-value payments by volume will be processed through this standardised messaging system as major currencies are adopting it.

“We have heard the commercial bank and regulatory perspective on the G20 roadmap. At SWIFT, we are also spending significant time on the recommendations from the BIS, the IMF and World Bank and the company has a team working full-time on this,” said Garg.

The move to ISO 20022, meanwhile, is more than just a mandatory exercise. Instead, it’s a key factor in driving innovation and building a frictionless chances that banking customers are buying and trading cryptocurrencies – which are prone to price volatility due to lack of firm regulation in the crypto industry.

G20 Saudi Presidency in 2020, the G20 roadmap on cross-border payments is more of stock-taking, investigating and pinpointing challenges to address the pain points that are confronting the payments space. He also urged representatives of different banks that were present at the round table to take time and study the Exploring multilateral platform for cross-border payments report from the BIS, the IMF and the World Bank.

A promising path is multilateral crossborder payment platforms that combine new forms of CBDC with new innovative technologies. SAMA and the UAE central bank launched Project Aber in 2020 – a joint CBDC that showed that central banks can leverage distributed ledger future – offering new opportunities and the chance to enhance services all along a transaction’s lifecycle.

The G20 has outlined a roadmap to improve the speed, cost, transparency, choice and accessibility of cross-border payments, and new developments are coming thick and fast to help realise these goals. So, what’s driving these changes?

The core payments space is seeing greater competition at all levels, from alternative providers and fintechs to large, established players. Similarly, domestic market infrastructures are increasingly looking to connect and interoperate with each other. This is leading to the exploration of new ways to settle payments, from CBDCs to instant payments.

Front-end innovation: Significant development is also taking place on the front end, including the rise of new apps and e-commerce platforms.

Alrabiah highlighted that since the

Global central banks are researching and experimenting with central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). SAMA is one of the many institutions that are looking into this new technology. The central bank is expecting CBDC to provide a more efficient and resilient payment system and help reduce business costs.

Bank Albilad’s Al-Sayed said the CBDC initiative will be a safe and transparent game changer given the risks and technology (DLT) to issue and exchange their digital currencies.

“CBDC will eliminate the risks and ambiguity associated with digital currencies and cryptocurrencies while putting central banks and regulators that run the global economy back in the control seat,” adds Al-Sayed.

Using the surge in digital payments as an example, Alhadeed said the CBDC concept is already in the system while noting that the financial service ecosystem has made

the disappearance of fiat money so easy amid a surge in digital payments. “Banking customers are already dealing with CBDC indirectly when settling payments, that is sort of the digital currency,” he said.

Technological innovations and partnerships among stakeholders can address the challenges around speed, cost and transparency in crossborder payments. SAMA’s Alrabiah highlighted that CBDCs are similar to – but not the same as – stablecoins

• Rayan Altuwaijri, Division Manager, Payment Systems Initiatives Realization, Saudi Central Bank –SAMA

• John O’ Donovan, Payment Systems Business Advisor, Saudi Central Bank - SAMA

• Yagoub Yousef AlSulaiman, Head of Transformation Management, Alinma Bank

• Ahmed Belal , Manager Correspondent Banking, Bank Albilad

Payments, Public Investment Fund (PIF)

• Bader Al-Husainan , Head of Payments Section, Riyad Bank

• Amol Bahuguna , SVP, Head of Corporate Technology, Innovation and Change Management, Riyad Bank

• Rida Al-Arnaout, Head of Payment Services Unit, Riyad Bank

• Gulfan Shaikh , Senior Payments Operations Manager, SAB and as many as 60 global central banks are still investigating the use cases associated with CBDCs and 11 countries including Nigeria and some Caribbean nations have already launched digital currencies.

Fintech companies have identified opportunities and are challenging existing banking models in the cross-border space. However, incumbents are fighting back by harnessing the full potential of existing innovative technologies and exploring how new ways of doing business can give them a competitive edge in the market.

In attendance at the roundtable were:•

H.E. Ziad Al Yousef, Deputy Governor for Development and Technology, Saudi Central Bank - SAMA

• Aiman Al Rabiah, Director, Payment Systems Business Department, Saudi Central Bank - SAMA

• Khalid H. Al Otaibi, Division Manager, Payment Systems Operations, Saudi Central Bank - SAMA

• Ahmed Fadl , Digital Solutions Delivery Manager, Bank Albilad

• Ammar Awad Altawiel , Manager of Digital Solutions Delivery, Bank Albilad

• Ahmed Darwish Al-Sayed, Head of Digital Delivery, Bank Albilad

• Abdul Haye Ahmad , Payments Programs Manager, Banque Saudi Fransi

• Khalid AlQassem, Head of Product and Innovation, Banque Saudi Fransi

• Mohammed Ghaban , Head of Operations, D360

• Sheikh Manzoor Sabir, Head of Cash Products, Gulf International Bank

• Sandeep Dhawan, Regional Head of Products – Payments, JP Morgan Chase Bank

• Ra sheed Alshaikh , Head of Wholesale Payments, JP Morgan Chase Bank - Riyadh Branch

• Mohamed Hussein Ishak, Country Manager, National Bank of Egypt

• Sara Alhakbani , Head of Digital

• Ganesh V enkatakrishnan , Product Manager - Fintech & Payments, SAB

• Haya Al Zamil , Senior Digital Payments, SAB

• E sraa Diwali , Senior Digital Payments, SAB

• Afnan Alghamdi , EVP, Head of Payment Operations, Saudi National Bank

• Ahmed Alhadeed, Chief Treasury Officer, Vision Bank

• Nawaf Althukair, Head of Fis, Vision Bank

• Abdullah Almoslem , Hea d of Money Markets and FX, Vision Bank

• Onur Ozan, Managing Director & Regional Head - Middle East, North Africa and Turkiye, Swift

• Huny Garg, Country Head - KSA & Bahrain, Swift

• Kalyani Bhatia , Global Head of Payments & PMI Go to Market, Swift

• Andre w Cover , Roundtable Moderator, MEA Finance Magazine