Sadad

tags

Saudi Arabia URL

EBPP: Electronic Bill Payment & Presentment

Summary #

• The SADAD payment system was established by the SAMA to be the national electronic bill presentment and payment (EBPP) service provider for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA).
• The core mandate for SADAD is to facilitate and streamline bill payment transactions of end consumers through all channels of the KSA (Saudi Arabia) Banks. SADAD was launched on May 19, 1999.
• SADAD links the commercial sector and local banks, offering the ability to collect customer payments electronically through all the banking channels in the KSA (Kingdome of Saudi Arabia) 24 hours a day.

How SADAD works #

1. Billers send summary bills information to SADAD at a pre-determined schedule
2. SADAD validates data received and uploads it into its database
3. SADAD notifies billers of any discrepancies
4. Customer requests bill information through bank channels
5. The bank forwards the request received to SADAD
6. SADAD retrieves bill information from its database and forwards it to customer
7. Customer selects the bills to be paid and the respective amounts
8. The bank debits the customer account and confirms the transaction
9. SADAD updates its database based on the bank’s confirmation
10. SADAD notifies relevant billers accordingly
11. At the end of the day, billers receive reconciliation reports from SADAD showing a breakdown of all transactions processed by SADAD
12. At the end of the day, SADAD initiates settlement instructions through SARIE
13. SADAD updates bills status to ‘settled’

Difference between Bill and Invoice? #

• To sum it up, sending an invoice is to request payment and receiving it is a bill is to pay for the purchase. sending is invoice or receiving it is bill.

• When a seller sends an invoice requesting payment, the buyer will receive it as a bill.

• However, a bill is issued immediately following the product or service delivery, and the seller expects their clients to make payment then and there. A typical example can be the bill issued after your stay at a hotel which is to be paid before you checkout.

• So the main difference is that while an invoice is sent (by the seller), a bill is received (by the customer).

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Why it exists? #

Generally merchants or sellers can issue invoices directly to customers but the more customers and more invoices or bills from customers perspective, it make sense to make it easier for the those many customers and with frequent customers to make it easier for everyone, systems like SADAD by central governments, like SAMA, create infrastructure to facilitate this nationally.