Saudi Payments partners IBM and Mastercard to launch instants payments system 'sarie'

The introduction of ‘sarie’ is in line with Saudi Arabia's Financial Sector Development Program (FSDP) under Saudi Vision 2030, which targets achieving 70% non-cash transactions by 2030.

‘sarie’ allows bank customers to send and receive money in real-time using a range of services and transfer options. Customers of local banks can make instant transactions of up to USD 5,300 through the system. Further, ‘sarie’ users can benefit from the transfer service to send up to USD 660 using aliases, such as mobile number, email address, ID number, or IBAN number.

Saudi Payments selected IBM Global Business Services (GBS), the services and consultancy arm of IBM, to lead the project as the System Integrator (SI) partner and an end-to-end digital payments solutions provider. IBM GBS designed and architected the solution through its system integration methodology, built a technical platform and integrated Mastercard's payments platform into Saudi Payments' existing infrastructure while connecting it to the IT systems of locally operating banks.

Saudi Payments has rolled out ‘sarie’ across all banks operating locally, using technology built on the ISO 20022 messaging standards.