The Central Bank of Oman has launched a national ATM and point-of-sale PIN-debit switch called OmanNet, an official at the country’s top banking authority tells PaymentsSource.
The new switch replaces and consolidates two earlier switches in Oman–Al-Shamel and Al-Watani–into a central one managed by the country’s central bank, he adds.
“It enables migration of all financial institutions onto the common state-of-art technology platform with the highest international security standards,” the official says.
Besides the cash withdrawals and balance enquiries, OmanNet provides two additional services–mini statements and account-to-account funds transfers at all connected ATMs for those banks offering the functionality, the official says.
“OmanNet will be directly connected with the national switches of all other countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council on gradual basis,” he says. “This will allow residents of Oman to access their accounts seamlessly through the ATMs in any of these countries, and vice versa.”
The new switch uses the Base24-EPS payment engine from U.S.-based vendor ACI Worldwide. ACI worked on the project with the consultancy arm of the central bank, U.S.-based hardware maker Hewlett-Packard Co. Ltd., Oman-based CIT Global, and Oman-based Industrial Management Technology & Contracting LLC, according to the central bank.
As a second phase of the project, the central bank will take up EMV compliance, though all the stakeholders have yet to agree on a timeline for the transition from magnetic stripe cards to ones relying on chips and personal identification numbers.
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