JP Morgan Payments has unveiled a cross-border liquidity solution in Saudi Arabia, enabling clients to link to liquidity pools in London and other international cities.
The service will offer users a pipeline to connect their balances to liquidity structures globally. The primary features of the product include optimizing liquidity in Saudi Arabia, automating cash consolidation from many accounts into one account, and maximizing connections to offshore structures.
By optimizing liquidity transfer payments, the solution strives to “enable companies to reduce idle balances and use internal cash more efficiently, improving deficit balances and eliminating overdraft fees,” as highlighted by JP Morgan Payments’ global head of liquidity and account solutions, Lori Schwartz.
JP Morgan’s senior country officer for Saudi Arabia, Bader Alamoudi, explains that given the quick-paced financial and technological development happening in Saudi Arabia, the product strives to match the ambitions of the nation as set mainly in the Kingdom’s Financial Services Development Program by mostly diversifying the region’s economy and strengthening its connections to offshore companies.
Alamoudi continues:
“Our solution helps treasurers achieve digital transformation and provides them with a comprehensive, inter-connected, and efficient cash management structure.”
He thinks that the solution will benefit the whole of Saudi Arabia in the long term by mitigating pressure built up during the pandemic in minimizing risk and uncertainty through automization processes. The Liquidity Cross Border Sweep comes after the domestic sweeping capability product that JP Morgan rolled out in the region in Q4 2021.
Explaining the expansion of JP Morgan’s services in the area, Schwartz said:
“Our domestic capabilities were the first phase of our liquidity sweeping offering in the region, allowing clients to concentrate funds locally and within Saudi Arabia. The enablement of cross-border sweeping, now further allows clients to connect their structures and liquidity outside of Saudi Arabia, allowing clients to extract the benefits of visibility, optimization, and control of their liquidity globally.”
On the future of JP Morgan Payments in the region, Alamoudi said that the digitization processes and real-time payments capability that the solution offers for domestic and international transactions will revolutionize the open banking landscape of the area.
He added:
“We are also seeing the need for comprehensive cash management solutions that support the integration of back office systems and innovative products that cover a regional network with global connectivity.”
While commenting on JP Morgan’s growth in the region, Shahrokh Moinian, EMEA head of payments, said:
“EMEA forms a crucial part of the firm’s Payments growth agenda. It’s an exciting place to be right now with a huge growth opportunity. We are investing and continue to commercialize our disruptive technology investments, which have been a game changer in several areas. Underpinning all of this are our efforts in modernizing our platforms and investing in attracting and developing talent in the regions.”
JP Morgan Payments is now developing its business in the shifting EMEA landscape after it recently tapped new heads of client service and implementations and sales leadership in the entire area with banking veterans Brook Johnson and Malika Beri respectively.
