The UAE’s Instant Payment Platform (IPP) will launch in the first quarter of 2023.
The latest announcement on the IPP, which had initially been slated for an October launch, was made in a statement from the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates (CBUAE) on Thursday (Dec. 15).
The statement said that the IPP will be rolled out in phases with the initial launch involving a pilot group of licensed financial institutions.
Per the statement, “The new platform will enable the provision of the next generation of payment services to UAE financial institutions and consumers.” The CBUAE also said it is important for “financial institutions and eligible payment services providers to ensure their readiness to adopt the Instant Payment Platform in accordance with the approved action plan.”
As PYMNTS has previously reported, ACI Worldwide acted as the CBUAE’s technology partner in its project to build a domestic real-time payments scheme.
Around the globe, ACI Worldwide has stated that it supports 17 real-time domestic payments schemes, including Zelle, TCH and FedNow in the U.S. Meanwhile, in Europe, the firm’s Enterprise Payments Platform is involved in roughly half of the U.K.’s Faster Payments and two-thirds of Hungary’s GIRO transactions.
Similar to those systems, the UAE’s IPP will allow instant transfers between Dirham-denominated bank accounts, bringing the UAE’s interbank payment rails into the real-time era.
Elsewhere in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region, Bahrain, Kuwait and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) have also implemented instant payment schemes.
Leading the charge, Bahrain launched Fawri+ in 2015, which has seen significant adoption in the years since. According to data from ACI Worldwide, Fawri+ grew from accounting for less than 1% of electronic transactions in 2017 to over 50% by 2021.
Rolling out such initiatives can have significant economic advantages, and instant payments have the potential to unleash growth in the GCC.
For example, the ACI data projects the savings created by real-time payments in Bahrain to rise to $208 million by 2026, helping to generate an additional $310 million of economic output.
In the UAE, the report found that real-time payments accounted for just a 3.2% share of the total electronic payments transaction volume in 2021. However, it anticipates that to raise to 10.4% by 2026.
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