Citi and Arab Bank to Offer Corporate Clients 24/7 USD Payments
Corporate clients at selected Arab Bank branches will be able to send and receive US dollar payments any hour, any day, through Citi's clearing network.
Nadia Mansour Nadia Mansour covers fintech across the UAE and MENA for Anecdoted -- digital banking, payments licences and the startups building around them. nadia@anecdoted.com
Citi and Arab Bank will give Arab Bank's corporate clients access to Citi's 24/7 US Dollar Clearing service, widening a relationship that already spans dollar clearing, liquidity management, and trade and working capital services across several Arab Bank entities and markets.
Clients at selected Arab Bank branches will be able to send and receive US dollar payments at any hour, on any day of the week. Arab Bank will process cross-border payments through Citi's clearing network instead of waiting for conventional banking hours to resume.
Weekend schedules and closed desks
The two banks said the arrangement targets a practical gap for lenders in the Middle East and North Africa, where weekend schedules rarely line up with those of the markets their clients trade with. A payment that arrives while local desks are shut can sit idle until the next business day, leaving counterparties in Asia, Europe or the United States waiting. The banks said the service is meant to let regional lenders manage those mismatched calendars and stay in step with global markets. Both said the combined network is designed to comply with local and international regulations.
What the two banks said
Emre Umut, Citi's Middle East and Africa head of FI sales, said digitisation and expanding trade corridors are making speed, transparency and innovation increasingly essential for corporates and financial institutions.
Maram Al-Jazireh, Arab Bank's global head of FI and sustainability, said the 24/7 dollar clearing work reflects the bank's commitment to solutions that improve client banking and give businesses access to advanced global payment capabilities as their international needs evolve.
Scale of the network
Citi's 24/7 USD Clearing service is live with more than 300 financial institutions in over 50 markets, and connects to more than 290 clearing systems worldwide.
Arab Bank brings reach of its own. Its network and subsidiaries include operations in Dubai, Singapore, London, Paris and Manama, alongside its home base in the Middle East and North Africa. The two banks are not starting from scratch; the new service builds on clearing, liquidity and trade finance work they already handle together across those entities and markets.
Why the dollar leg matters
Dollar clearing decides when a cross-border trade is really finished. It fixes the moment a supplier can count on the funds and a treasurer can stop tracking a wire. When that leg stalls over a weekend, the delay travels down the chain to everyone waiting on the payment. Plugging into a correspondent network rather than building dollar infrastructure from scratch is how most regional banks close that gap, and it is the part of the arrangement that reaches furthest beyond the two institutions involved.
