THE National Commercial Bank (NCB) has recently launched the second phase of the Wages Protection System (WPS), which is intended to monitor payments and allowances given to employees in the private sector. The second phase, which came into effect in early December, covers enterprises with over 2,000 employees. NCB has successfully developed its wage payment mechanism to meet the WPS requirements. In this regard, the bank obtained an official certificate from the Ministry of Labor to prove that NCB wages file format is corresponding to the technical specifications of WPS file format. AlAhli has previously announced a successful first stage implementation of WPS issued by the Ministry of Labor to control wage payment transactions for male and female workers in private sector enterprises, for either Saudis or expatriates. NCB's ideal participation in the system was through its wide range of corporate banking services provided to enterprises with 3000+ employees. NCB has dedicated an e-mail address ([email protected])to receive all customers' inquiries on the WPS. On the other hand, NCB has developed the prepaid salary card to help workers use the card in AlAhli or other local banks' ATM machines. The worker can also use the cards to perform point of sale transactions, international remittance through Quick Pay service, SADAD payments, and Sawa/LANA card recharge. Developing such mechanism highlights the ongoing endeavors of NCB to enhance its corporate banking services. On its part, the NCB Cash Management exerts all efforts to meet all requirements of its corporate customers through a wide package of products such as Payroll service, prepaid salary cards and electronic services through AlAhli e-corp. Meanwhile, the combined assets of the 100 largest Arab banks totaled around $2.3 trillion at the end of 2012 and these are spread as follows: 16 banks from the UAE, 12 banks from Saudi Arabia, 10 banks from both Qatar and Lebanon, 9 banks from Egypt, 8 banks from Kuwait, 7 banks from both Bahrain and Morocco, 5 banks from Libya, 4 banks from Algeria, 3 banks from each of Oman, Tunisia and Iraq, two from Jordan, and one from Syria. — SG
