Congratulations are in order for the team over at Bank Albilad who recently announced they have launched Open Banking services as per the specifications of the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA).
Throughout the last few years, it’s fair to say that excitement and expectation have been building around the GCC with respect to Open Banking. Each country is at a different development stage.
It’s therefore great to see one of the leading banks in Saudi take centre stage to make such an announcement.
Getting your systems and processes in place to enable such a launch is quite a challenge, especially when you’re having to make many legacy systems ‘dance’ to a tune that they’ve never heard before.
We extend our congratulations to the Bank Albilad digital team. The team is led by an executive we highlighted in our Digital Transformer 2023 series for Saudi Arabia last month, Bassam Aleidy (Bassam’s LinkedIn), Chief Digital & Innovation Officer of Bank Albilad.
Here are some of the features Bank Albilad lists on their new Open Banking page:
Features
The ability to securely share customer account data with third parties for additional innovation solutions and services
The customer can provide and cancel the data through the Bank Albilad application or through the Third-Party Provider
The ability of presenting customer bank accounts from several banks on a third-party app licensed by the Central Bank
Enabling the customer to monitor his financial behavior by viewing the transactions executed on his bank accounts
Open banking can help individuals better manage their finances by providing them with a more complete picture of their financial situation and enabling them to track their spending and savings more effectively and improving budgeting, savings, investments, and other financial activities.