Don’t know? Well they right answer is: SADAD. What? SADAD, the national Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment (EBPP) service provider for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Well actually, they themselves claim to be the world’s second largest e-bill payment system.
First launched in 2004 by the Saudi Monetary Agency (SAMA), the Kingdom’s central bank, to facilitate and streamline bill payment transactions through banks, SADAD was designed to replace payment and collection that was fragmented and silo-based for government, citizens and businesses.
Over the years, the Ministry of Finance SADAD Enrolment Project has been expanded and is now handling a huge portion of government e-payments, significantly cutting the losses previously experienced by the government under its manual, cash-based system for paying fees and transaction charges. SADAD is also reducing the time taken by billers to collect money from banks – from up to 60 days to one business day. Ouch!
Update 15-11-2013
The Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA) has enlisted business software leader SAP to revamp SADAD, the Kingdom’s national Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment (EBPP) back office systems. SADAD enables Saudi citizens to pay a wide range of bills at all of Saudi Arabia’s banks. Read more.
Extending SADAD into the public sector agencies
When the Saudi Ministry of Finance wanted to extend the highly successfully SADAD electronic bill presentation and payment service – which operates in partnership with banks and other billing agencies – to other public sector agencies, it used Microsoft solutions to deploy SADAD at 37 new sites, working over a period of five years, and ensuring that the public sector now serves more than 29 million citizens’ payment transactions.
Commenting on the need for SADAD, Yousef Al Hargan, SADAD Enrolment Project Manager, Ministry of Finance, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, said: “Prior to SADAD, a huge percentage of bills were paid in cash at bank branches by customers throughout the kingdom. To extend the use of SADAD in the public sector, we issued an initial request for proposal for a partner to deploy and operate SADAD at up to 22 sites with an appropriate IT platform. We needed a technology solution that was open to accommodate the particular technologies used by different billers.”
Facts and figures
After choosing Microsoft as its partner in expanding the SADAD electronic payments system the first 22 sites required by the Ministry of Finance were delivered in just two years. In the third year, the number increased to 31, and then six more were subsequently added, making 37 in five years. Now, today, SADAD is argued to the second largest electronic payments system in the world and already serving around 29 million users. Citizen satisfaction has contributed to the rapid expansion of SADAD and 14 banks now accept SADAD payments.
Loosely based on: http://www.albawaba.com/business/saudi-arabia-sadad-531083
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Gentlemen,
Having been in the industry for a while I vaguely recall some news that an EBPP system in Saudi Arabia for SADAD, built on CheckFree i-Series engine was launched in the year 2004. It seems to be more or less the same year what you are referring to in your article without mentioning the product or the vendor. Does this mean that the system of SADAD has been replaced with another, Microsoft product based solution? If this is the case can you pls. outline what product(s) of Microsoft is used for replacing the original core solution?