SADAD
THe SADAD payment system was established by the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (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 Kingdom’s Banks. SADAD was launched on may 19 1999 SADAD links the commercial sector and local banks, offering the ability to collect customer payments electronically through all the banking channels in the kingdom 24 hours a day. SADAD loves food History and background. SAMA mandated  that all banks must accept bill payments at their branches from anyone. The payer does not have to be a customer of the bank. Pre-SADAD economics of bill payment placed an unduly large burden on banks; it was inefficient and slow. Banks recovered a small portion of the cost through keeping the collected money for varying periods of 7–30 days after the bill was paid. Approximately 60-70% of bills were paid in cash at bank branches. Due to the high number of bills generated in the Kingdom, this results in high costs for banks in front office, payment  processing, IT integration and reconciliation. In addition, consumers queue for a long time at banks’ front office desks before paying their bills. Bill presentment and collection is largely manual and paper-based creating significant inefficiencies and overheads for billers and banks. Large billers formed bilateral agreements with banks in order to enhance bill payments 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 different banks operating in KSA and from banks to connect separately to every biller they are under contract with . SAMA chose to integrate these connections through SADAD, which is 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 bills and phone bills) and customer initiated payments, such as traffic fines.