News

Fime to develop next-gen testing and validation scheme in Saudi Arabia

February 2, 2018

Fime, a long-time partner of Alhamrani Universal in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, has been selected by mada, the kingdom's domestic payment scheme, to develop a bespoke cloud-based testing platform and certification process.

According to a press release, the new secure portal will make the certification process faster, easier and more cost efficient for member banks and for providers of payment instruments and points of interaction.

The project will also reduce the costs and resources required by mada to launch and manage payments products.

The self-service platform will allow stakeholders to:

• Log into a private, secure mada network.
• Create a certification project.
• Perform in-house testing on payment terminals and cards.
• Submit test logs to the cloud.
• Monitor validation progress in real time.
• Completely remove the need to send hardware for certification.

"By automating our systems and deploying them online, we can streamline the whole process, reduce certification time and give member banks and vendors the accessible service that they need to innovate," said Ziad Al Yousef, general director of the payment systems department at the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority. "All of this work ties into supporting the Saudi Vision 2030 goal of a cashless society."

"This is certification for the digital age," Fime CEO Lionel Grosclaude said in the release. "Cloud-based certification puts banks in the driving seat and removes the logistical and administrative headache that schemes face when managing all of the testing themselves."