Citizens and expats can now pay their traffic, civil status and passport fees through the SADAD Payment System. The Ministry of Interior represented by the National Information Center in cooperation with the Ministry of Finance has completed linking payment of all its services. Now the payment for the services of the Ministry of Interior can be made through e-banking, tele-banking, ATMs or bank branches. The SADAD Payment System was started by the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA) in October 2004 to facilitate and streamline bill payment transactions through all channels of banks in the Kingdom. SADAD is already being used for the payment of utility bills and traffic fines. Engineer Saad Al-Hamdan, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Finance for Revenues Affairs, said the SADAD system has reached a success rate of 90 percent. “We are working to return electronically the amounts deposited by clients for services that they do not benefit from,” he said, acknowledging the complaints received in this regard. During a workshop organized Saturday in Riyadh, Al-Hamdan confirmed that all government agencies would be linked to the system. Up till now 33 government agencies have been linked to the system, he said. The system enables billers to make their payment electronically through all the banking channels in the Kingdom, which include 9,435 ATMs and 1,442 bank branches in addition to phone banking and online banking. A market research conducted on behalf of the SADAD team by Pan Arab Research Center on a sample of 522 consumers in the Kingdom showed that customers' main concerns were about time wastage, inconvenience of bill collection etc. – Okaz/SG , bills past due and service cuts due to delay in bill processing.
