The SADAD payment system was established by the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) to be the national electronic bill presentment and payment (EBPP) service provider for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). The core mandate for SADAD is to facilitate and streamline bill payment transactions of end consumers through all channels of the KSA (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) Banks. SADAD was launched on June 7, 2007.
SAMA mandated that all banks accept bill payments from anyone at their branches. The payer does not have to be a customer of the bank. Pre-SADAD economics of bill payment placed an unduly significant burden on banks; it needed to be more efficient and faster. Banks recovered a small portion of the cost by keeping the collected money for 7âÂÂ30 days after the bill was paid.
Approximately 60-70% of bills were paid in cash at bank branches. The high number of invoices generated in the Kingdom increases bank costs in the front office, payment processing, IT integration and reconciliation. In addition, consumers queue for a long time at banksâ front office desks before paying their bills. Bill presentment and collection are primarily manual and paper-based, creating significant inefficiencies and overheads for billers and banks.
Large billers formed bilateral agreements with banks to enhance bill payment collection. This enabled consumers to use their bank channels to view and pay bills (without any bill consolidation). It required every biller to connect to the twelve banks operating in KSA and from banks to connect separately to every biller under contract.
SAMA chose to integrate these connections through SADAD, a single platform that links different billers and banks to enable consumers to use the electronic channels of any bank. SADAD is now facilitating the payment of high-volume periodic bills (such as utility and phone bills) and customer-initiated payments, such as traffic fines.