AMF, Visa To Support Growth Of Cross-Border Payments Between Arab Region And Global Markets
The Arab Monetary Fund (AMF) and Visa announced today the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding, under which Visa and Buna (The Regional Payment Platform owned by the AMF), will work together to enable additional rails of money transfer across the two systems, supporting the growth and efficiency of cross-border payments between the Arab region and the rest of the world.
Buna and Visa will collaborate to offer their network of participants and member banks respectively, a quick, efficient, cost effective and secure channels to execute cross-border payments in Arab and International currencies, enabling diversified pay out options.
Both Buna and Visa will build on their strong capacities and value propositions, to cater to the growing financial needs of the Arab region, and design optimal solutions that can unlock sustainable opportunities in the payment industry.
Commenting on signing the MoU, Dr. Abdulrahman A. Al Hamidy, Director-General, Chairman of the Board of the Arab Monetary Fund, stressed the strategic aspects of such partnership and the added value it delivers for the regional and global financial community. "Buna and Visa partnership is in line with our strategic approach to join forces with international institutions that share with us the same vision to contribute to the development and growth of the payment industry across the Arab world and globally," said Dr. Al Hamidy.
"With this initiative, Buna will provide its participant banks additional safe and credible channels to broaden their cross-payment capacities, implement innovative business models and better serve their clientele. Both Visa and Buna will capitalise on this partnership to deliver joint cross-border payment products and services that are risk controlled and with broad coverage and extended availability to better serve the diverse needs of the financial and payment community in the Arab region and beyond," he added.
From her part, Dr. Saeeda Jaffar, Group General Manager for GCC at Visa, said, "This MoU reinforces Visa’s commitment to support the evolution of the Arab region and the vital role digital payments play in this sphere. We believe that driving adoption of real time payments can be enabled through value added services, and our vision is to support our clients to promote more innovative real time payments use cases to benefit customers in the region who are looking for industry leading money transfer and cross border solutions."
Buna is a cross-border payment system owned by the Arab Monetary Fund, aiming to enable financial institutions and central banks in the Arab region and beyond to send and receive payments in local currencies as well as key international currencies in a safe, cost- effective, risk-controlled, and transparent environment.
