The Governor of Saudi Arabia Monetary Authority (SAMA) Dr. Ahmed Abdulkarim Alkolefi announced the launch of Esal – an electronic bill presentment and payment platform for businesses that is developed by Saudi Payments. Esal platform is considered as one of the most important initiatives of the financial sector development program that will contribute to achieving the Kingdom Vision 2030. Esal invoicing delivery platform is a major step in the digitization of services in Saudi Arabia, providing an integrated solution for billing and payments between government sectors, businesses and suppliers. The platform provides a wide range of advantages for both suppliers and buyers which will help in cost reduction, operational efficiency and time savings of bill presentation and payment. It will contribute to increase in efficiency of both invoice operations and billing procedures, whereby contributing to the improvement of financial management of the organization and heighten the level of transparency. In addition, it will provide easy access to businesses' outgoing invoices and documentation review that is associated with the invoice that is raised on the delivery system, which reflects positively on the speed of payment of invoices and improves the financial management of the organization. The platform will also help improve the management of bill payments through multiple features, such as clarification of a payment, check on a particular payment status within the exported invoices and an access to user-friendly graphs. Esal platform will provide detailed functionality such as, checking the reconciliation and reconciliation processes for the amounts collected through the electronic Control Panel. It also allows an integrated interaction and communication between both the supplier and the buyer by showing the status of the invoice in a receipt system with a classification that accurately determines the status the actual invoice in terms of successful delivery, acceptance, rejection, cancellation, modification, and completion of payment by either SADAD Bills Service or other payment methods. Moreover, the platform will increase the efficiency and accuracy of its clients through eliminating paper transactions, reducing the need for cash collection, which will save the costs associated with this aspect. The platform is characterized by applying of the procedures and requirements of electronic invoicing in line with the acceleration in the growth of different sectors and contributes to support the decision-making in a very simple approach. Ziad Al-Yousef, general manager of Saudi Payments, a subsidiary of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority, said: "The payments sector has seen a growing shift toward the adoption of electronic payments in the kingdom as a major payment option. While both the corporate and consumers have benefited from access to a wide range of payment options provided by Saudi Payments systems. We are very much keen on providing differentiated solutions to the corporate sectors that will help automate their invoices and collect their payments electronically in an efficient and transparent methods." Besides, "we are confident that Esal platform will have a significant and positive impact on the Saudi economy, and help link businesses and suppliers. Users of the platform will notice immediate improvements in several areas such as customer experience, financial management and collection. " It is worth mentioning that the Esal platform is one of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority initiatives as part of the Financial Sector Development Program to support the development of the national economy and diversify the sources of income, support the digitization of the financial sector, and reduce the use of cash collection. The platform is also one of the components of the national digital payments Infrastructure system, which is developed and operated by Saudi Payments that is part of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority payments along with mada, SADAD and SARIE, where by the platform contributes to the transition towards a cashless society. For more information, access the website: www.esal.sa — SG
