Muscat: Oman Investment and Finance Company (OIFC) has received the Central Bank of Oman (CBO) approval and license to operate as a Payment Service Provider (PSP) in the Sultanate of Oman.
The license will enable the company to provide new digital payment services such as Khedmah E-Wallet and other payment channels, the company said.
CBO has been actively promoting digital payments through different sets of measures that have been taken in recent years with the ultimate objective of the shift from cash to cashless payments.
The ever-increasing demand for payment and settlement systems (PSS) and the increased use of digital payment have been handled by the PSS infrastructure in Oman smoothly and comfortably, the CBO annual report for 2022 said.
However, CBO has remained vigilant on the developments in the PSS and plans to enhance the PSS infrastructure to provide a safe, secure, and robust payment service.
The statistics about payment systems indicate a promising shift towards e-payment.
There has been a noticeable upward trend in transactions conducted at POS terminals.
The percentage contribution of e-commerce and POS terminals to total OmanNet transactions has been increasing from 66 percent in
2019 to about 85 percent in 2022.
ATM transactions are almost at a standstill or are declining slightly in volume terms, the percentage contribution of ATM to the total OmanNet transactions has decreased by 15 percent in 2022 from more than 34 percent in 2019.
This positive trend indicates that the market is moving in the right direction, reflecting society’s growing interest in shifting to digital payments.
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