Kuwait’s Central bank digital transactions increase to 645% since 2016

Kuwait’s Central bank digital transactions increase to 645% since 2016

Some 110 financial digital services had entered the Kuwaiti market due to the flexible auditing approach adopted by the Central Bank of Kuwait (CBK), pushing digital financial transactions via cellphones to 645 percent since 2016 and leading to a decrease of in-branch transactions by 37 percent. Using the latest technology is one of the CBK’s key strategies since the earliest days of the banking sector.

The strategy had led to the use of bankcards in Kuwait since 1979, the first country to do so in the GCC region. In 1989, the initial seeds for the Shared Electronic Banking Company (KNET) were planted with an actual establishment in 1992. KNET handled in 2021 an estimated 558 million transactions online.

Through all these initiatives, the CBK had set a digital strategy that was an integral part of the Kuwait 2030 vision for development. The International Banking Conference “Shaping the Future”, held in Kuwait 2019, was the focal point pushing for digitizing banking regionally and internationally with the participation of banking experts and leading economic and financial figures from around the globe.

Achievable

In regards to the first goal, the CBK launched in 2004 the Kuwait Automated Settlement System for Inter-participant Payments (KASSIP), originally aimed to handle