Money20/20 closes with Alipay+ and Tap to Pay on iPhone

Editorial Calendar Money20/20 closes with Alipay+ and Tap to Pay on iPhone Money20/20 Middle Eastclosed in Riyadh on Wednesday with theSaudi Central Bankenabling Alipay+ acceptance in the Kingdom and setting out plans to enableApple’sTap to Pay on iPhone, two decisions that will change what a visitor or a merchant can do with a phone in Saudi Arabia more than anything a company announced across the three days. Set them beside Tuesday’s agreement with theQatar Central Bankon reciprocal acceptance of mada and HIMYAN cards, and the shape of the week becomes clear. Twelve months ago the market-opening announcements at this show came from the companies doing the opening.GoogleandAlipaydeclared their arrival in the Kingdom, and Google Pay and Google Wallet went live throughAl Rajhi BankandRiyad Bank.

This year the equivalent announcements came from the regulator. Alipay+ acceptance is not a wallet planting a flag, it is SAMA deciding which wallets may be presented at a Saudi terminal, so that international visitors can pay with the app they already carry. Tap to Pay on iPhone is not a product launch, it is a permission that turns every merchant’s phone into a card terminal.

This is what a market looks like when the entry question has been settled and the supervision question has not. The second edition of Money20/20 Middle East was the show where the Kingdom’s financial regulator did most of the opening, and the companies did the building. Evidence first, then a licence Nora M.

Albakr, Deputy Governor for Financial Innovation at SAMA, opened the closing day with the mechanism set out plainly. Her argument was that monetary and financial stability and the adoption of new technology are not in tension, and that a resilient system is the precondition for innovation that lasts rather than an obstacle to it. The central bank’s