The Volume of bill payment executed through SAMA"s payment system SADAD, in 2009 amounted to SR 43 billion of 67.7 million bill payment transactions of government agencies and companies that joined SADAD. In the Past, approximately 60-70% of bills were paid in cash at bank branches. Due to the high number of bills generated in the Kingdom, that results in high costs for banks in front office, payment processing, IT integration and reconciliation. In addition, consumers queued for a long time at banks' front office desks before paying their bills. Bill presentment and collection is largely manual and paper-based creating significant inefficiencies and overheads for billers and banks. SADAD now, reduced carrying cash to a large extent and prompted rely mainly on the electronic banking system. The number of SADAD users over the past years rose at an accelerated pace, registering 91% of bill payment in 2009, in contrast to only 27% in 2003.meanwhile the number of billers surged to more than 80 governmental and private institutions. launched on October 3rd, 2004, SADAD facilitates and streamlines bill payment transactions of end consumers through all channels of the Kingdom's Banks. It is now facilitating the payment of; high volume periodic/repetitive bills (e.g. utility bills, phone bills etc), and customer initiated payments, such as traffic fines etc. Currently, customers pay bills through SADAD using all the available banking channels, mainly, bank branch, Automatic Teller Machine (ATM), online banking and finally phone banking.
