Riyadh - Mubasher: Saudi Arabia is looking to increase non-cash transactions as part of its Saudi Vision 2030, but financial technology players need to provide creative offers to increase customers.
Cashless transactions accounted for less than a fifth of overall transactions in the kingdom in 2016, a figure that is lower than the target rate of 28% set by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for the financial sector development programme for 2020, Bloomberg reported on Monday.
In October last year, the Saudi Telecom Company (STC) launched its digital wallet app STC Pay which allows users to pay for restaurants and stores digitally.
Specialised digital wallets are provided, according to everyone's needs, including features for children and domestic workers such as a wallet to be used by the family driver at gas stations only.
“Still… cash is king,” STC Pay’s vice president of business Ahmed Alenazi said at a conference in Riyadh.
With 200,000 customers in Saudi Arabia out of the total population of 30 million, STC Pay will compete with rivals HalalaH and Apple Pay which has been recently launched in the kingdom.
STC Pay recently launched an international money transfer feature for facilitating the transfer of remittances as the Saudi telecom firm aims to reach more “unbanked” people such as expatriate domestic and blue-collar workers, STC Pay strategy manager Abdulrahman Daghache said.
