sarie and Aani: the Gulf instant payment rails
What SAMA and the Central Bank of the UAE have published about sarie and Aani: launch dates, who participates, and the customer fee cap sarie put in a circular.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE each run a domestic instant payment rail. sarie is the Saudi one, under the Saudi Central Bank. Aani is the UAE one, operated by Al Etihad Payments, a subsidiary of the Central Bank of the UAE. They are not a shared Gulf system, and a product that works on one does not clear on the other.
Both get described, in vendor copy, as “the local faster payment scheme”. The primary documents are narrower than that phrase, and they are narrower in different ways. sarie’s launch circular is an instruction to banks, with a fee cap written down. Aani’s launch announcement is a description of a platform and a first list of institutions. Neither document is an API spec.
sarie
SAMA’s circular of 17 February 2021, reference 42047169, tells participating members that the Instant Payment System (sarie) launches on 21 February 2021. The name is deliberate. The circular says members must use “sarie” in place of “Saudi Financial Transfers System” on channels and publications aimed at the public, and it ties the name back to that earlier system, launched in 1997.
What the circular actually requires of members:
- Sign the membership agreement and follow the technical and operational documents and service levels shared by Saudi Payments.
- Keep to the system’s maximum transaction limits, including a single transaction limit and a quick-transfer limit for transfers that do not need the beneficiary to be activated. The circular imposes those limits. It does not restate the amounts.
- Cap customer fees at half a riyal for transactions of 500 riyals or less, and one riyal for transactions above 500 riyals. Fees already circulated for amounts above the single transaction limit may stay.
- Follow the branding document and the customer-journey documents.
- Finish technical approvals before 20 February 2021.
The fee sentence is the part a product team can quote without inventing a number. Half a riyal, one riyal, with the 500 riyal split. The transaction ceilings are real obligations, and they are not in this letter. Using a figure from a secondary write-up as if it were this circular is how a limit ends up in a spec it was never taken from.
sarie is a bank membership system in this document. It is not, on the face of the circular, an open API for an unlicensed developer. Access is through a participating member. That is a different integration shape from a card gateway, and it is why this site’s gateway guides do not treat sarie as another hosted checkout.
Aani
On 16 October 2023 Al Etihad Payments announced Aani as an instant payments platform under the Central Bank’s Financial Infrastructure Transformation programme. The announcement says transactions are processed instantly, 24 hours a day. It says licensed financial institutions and payment service providers can offer it, and it names the eight institutions in the launch: Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, Al Fardan Exchange, Emirates NBD, Finance House, First Abu Dhabi Bank, Habib Bank AG Zurich, Mashreq Bank and National Bank of Fujairah.
Two access paths are in the announcement. Customers use the channels of a participating institution, or the Aani app. Merchants, for QR, were being onboarded through Magnati, Mashreq/Neo Pay and Network International, with the stated aim of reaching other licensed acquirers.
The announcement also said AEP was working to onboard the remaining licensed financial institutions by the end of 2024. That is a plan as of October 2023, not a status report. This page does not treat it as evidence of who is live now.
As with sarie, nothing in the launch note is an API. A merchant integration goes through a licensed acquirer or a participating institution. Which licence that institution holds is a separate question, covered in what a payments licence requires in Saudi and the UAE.
What is actually different
| sarie | Aani | |
|---|---|---|
| Market | Saudi Arabia | UAE |
| Who published the document used here | SAMA, circular to members, 17 February 2021 | Al Etihad Payments / CBUAE, launch announcement, 16 October 2023 |
| Launch date in that document | 21 February 2021 | 16 October 2023 |
| Fee cap written down | Half a riyal up to 500 riyals, one riyal above that | Not in the launch announcement |
| How a non-bank reaches it | Not as a direct member, on the terms of this circular | Through a licensed institution or acquirer |
Putting them in one table is fair. Treating the empty cells as “similar, probably” is not. Aani’s announcement does not set a customer tariff. sarie’s circular does not list an app.
What a builder should take from this
If you are integrating a gateway and a salesperson says the method is “sarie” or “Aani”, ask which member or acquirer you are actually calling, what they have published for that API, and which of the limits above they enforce on top. The rail and the API in front of it are different products.
Instant confirmation from the rail is also not the same event as a card settlement file. You can still be in a position of having told the user the transfer succeeded while your own ledger has not been reconciled to the member bank’s statement. That job does not disappear because the rail was instant. The mechanics are in reconciling a ledger against a settlement file.
For how these rails sit next to open banking, rather than next to cards, the longer comparison is open banking in the Gulf. sarie and Aani are payment systems. They are not the account-information frameworks.
Sources
- Instant Payments Launch (sarie), SAMA Rulebook, circular 42047169, 17 February 2021. Status shown as in force. Checked 26 September 2026.
- Al Etihad Payments launches Aani, Central Bank of the UAE, 16 October 2023. Checked 26 September 2026.
Both documents are short. Where a limit, a participant list or a fee is not in them, it is not stated here.