ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The Kurdistan Region’s finance ministry on Wednesday announced a strategic deal between the MyAccount program and banking giant Visa to increase awareness of digital payment methods and banking services in the Region.
“In the framework of the Kurdistan Region government’s efforts to strengthen the economy, the MyAccount Project signed a strategic agreement with the international Visa company in terms of digital payment,” the ministry announced in a statement.
It described the deal as important to ensure that the Kurdistan Region’s citizens learn to properly use digital banking systems, with an increasing number of people being registered through the My Account initiative.
“This is an important step towards the development of digital payment methods and improving economic support by conducting educational and awareness campaigns on digital payments and banking services in the Kurdistan Region. This helps employees and wages to become more reliant on digital payments in their daily affairs, this is how soon nearly one million people of the Kurdistan Region will get their salaries digitally,” the statement explained.
My Account was launched last year by Prime Minister Masrour Barzani as part of a government initiative to digitize services and improve the salary disbursement process, enabling public employees to receive payments directly through the banking system.
So far, 720,000 people have registered for the My Account project, 350,000 cards have been distributed and more than 550 ATMs have been installed in 200 different locations. There are plans to increase the number of ATMs.
The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has failed to pay the salaries of its civil servants on time and in full for a decade due to a financial crisis that further deteriorated in March 2023 when a Paris-based arbitration court ruling suspended its oil exports to international markets. Erbil is reliant on its local income and federal budget funds.
The KRG has repeatedly accused Baghdad of not making regular payments of its share of federal funds.
