Commemorating the glorious occasion of the 49th National Day, Central Bank of Oman (CBO) has announced the launch of its upgraded Mobile Payment Clearing & Settlement System (MPCSS) on November 18.
In line with CBO’s vision to promote e-payments in the country, the MPCSS platform has been upgraded to enable additional functionality in the mobile payments space.
The MPCSS platform enables seamless interoperability between various mobile banking/wallet systems operated by banks and payment service providers (PSPs) in the country, thereby facilitating a simple, efficient and secure payment mechanism driven through the medium of smartphones.
With an objective to ensure smooth processing of mobile payments between the banks & PSPs in the Sultanate, CBO has published unified specifications for MPCSS platform and National QR Code standards for mobile payments that are being made mandatory to be used for all banks and PSPs and stipulated “competitive fees” for mobile payments in the country.
With the use of MPCSS platform through Banks/PSPs mobile applications, users can make a range of payments such as Person-to-Person (P2P), Person to Business (P2B) & Person to Government (P2G), either by using their mobile numbers, alias names or the scanning QR Code in real-time. By launching this system, banks & PSPs will enable merchant payments (Government & Private Sector) using mobile banking/wallet apps which will be affordable, easy and will encourage small/micro businesses, corner shops to adopt e-payments. Going forward CBO also envisages this platform to grow and evolve as an alternative payment option for conducting e-commerce transactions.
Commenting on the launch this initiative Tahir bin Salim Al Amri, Executive President of CBO said: “The upgraded MPCSS platform enables easy, safe and cost-effective payments mechanism in the country, and we believe it will significantly help in transforming Oman into a less cash-based society.”
Tahir also commended the efforts of the banking community in launching the upgraded mobile banking/wallet applications and thanked all stakeholders engaged in this project.
Source: https://timesofoman.com/article/2243867/Business/CBO-upgrades-its-e-payments-system