The Central Bank of Oman (CBO) has recently announced joining the AFAQ payments system, operated by the Gulf Payments Company (GPC) and owned by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) central banks. Oman’s central bank and participant GCC banks successfully executed financial transactions on Monday.
In addition to the central bank, the first commercial banks to join AFAQ are Oman’s Bank Muscat and Bank Dhofar. This brings the total number of participant banks from the GCC region to 67 to date. GPC also revealed that it is working on including the rest of the banks in the region in the payment system.
AFAQ is a system that links all payment systems in the GCC region. Moreover, it offers services for executing financial transactions in local currencies in real-time with low fees, a secure environment and advanced technology.
Notably, Oman’s central bank launched the new local real-time gross settlement (RTGS) system in June 2023. Oman launched the first version of the RTGS system in 2005. Since then, the system has seen several improvements during the operational period to meet the needs of the banking and financial sector.
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The system operates 24/7 and falls in line with the country’s vision to bolster its national payments systems operations. The RTGS system’s inclusion into AFAQ falls into the region’s initiative to boost cross-border payments between the GCC countries.
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