While the Middle East has a nascent real-time payments market, it is about to see the sector take off, according to the latest report by industry experts ACI Worldwide.
When it comes to the leading economies in the region, Bahrain’s real-time payments market is a success story — at 34.2 percent, the country recorded the largest real-time share by volume, according to GlobalData.
Bahrain’s real-time payments system is called Fawri+ and has been in place since 2015.
It has seen a rapid ramp-up in terms of adoption and usage, growing from less than 1 percent of all electronic transactions by volume in 2017 to more than 50 percent of electronic payments volume in 2021.
The region is “uniquely placed to rapidly capitalise on the productivity and efficiency gains, as well as the economic benefits that real-time payments provide,” states the third edition of Prime Time for Real-Time, a report published by ACI Worldwide, in partnership with GlobalData and the Centre of Economics and Business Research (Cebr).
The senior vice president, Middle East, Africa and South Asia, ACI Worldwide, Santhosh Rao, said: “The Middle East is on the cusp of a real-time payments revolution; the region has an incredible opportunity and the momentum to drive economic growth and financial inclusion with real-time payments.
Rao argued that real-time payments improve liquidity in the financial system and therefore act as a catalyst for economic growth.
“The Middle East has shown that it has the appetite to embrace innovative technologies, and drive change and transformation at dazzling speed,” he said.
