QIB Adds Request to Pay to Instant Payments Service

Qatar Islamic Bank (QIB) has added a “request payment” feature to its instant payment service.

The new feature, announced Monday (July 22), lets customers request a payment from a registered user on its Fawran — Arabic for “instantly” — service through the bank’s mobile app.

“As part of QIB’s efforts to align with Qatar’s Third Financial Sector Strategy, the Request to Pay feature enhances the payment and transfer processes by integrating advanced security protocols and improving accessibility,” the bank said in a news release.

“This strategic initiative supports Qatar’s vision of becoming a leader in secure digital banking and financial services, enabling customers to manage their finances more effectively with a streamlined payment request and receipt process.”

PYMNTS covered the launch of Fawran earlier this year, noting that it was part of a broader trend of real-time payments adoption around the world.

“Fawran employs alternative identifiers for account details, allowing customers to swiftly send and receive funds without requiring them to input the typical beneficiary details like account and routing numbers,” that report said. “Instead, users simply assign a unique name to each bank account to enable instant transfers.”

Elsewhere in the instant payments world, PYMNTS last week spoke with Drew Edwards, CEO of Ingo Payments, about the one-year anniversary of the launch of the FedNow® Service. As that report noted, the roadmap to mass adoption of that system will take time.

“There’s a long cycle of adoption required, first, with the banks and then with the enablers, and then with the businesses,” Edwards told PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster.

“It’s going to be interesting to see what FedNow does beyond just being the plumbing to influence new payments choices,” he added.

Younger generations, he noted, are the most primed to demand instant payments, as they’re already accustomed to digital payments and digital wallets, and banks and providers have been speeding their transactions.

Joint research from PYMNTS Intelligence and Ingo Payments shows that consumers are willing to pay a fee for quicker payments.

In the meantime, as Edwards put it, FedNow has had some impact, even if things aren’t fully “live,” because “in that first year, you’ve got to give them the ‘win’ in terms of waking the market up. That’s progress.”