ProgressSoft's Electronic Check Clearing Solution Wins First Place of GCC e-Government Awards.

Kuwait City, November 16, 2011

During the GCC e-Government awarding ceremony, The Sultanate of Oman won the best e-service award in the business sector for its Electronic Image-based Check Clearing Solution, provided by ProgressSoft. The ceremony was held on the sidelines of the 2nd Gulf e-Government conference, which took place in Kuwait on 13 - 15 November 2011.

ProgressSoft's Electronic Check Clearing Solution (PS-ECC), which has been implemented by the Central Bank of Oman (CBO) since Jan 2009, won the top spot while competing against eighty-five projects from the GCC countries.

Mr. Abdul Qahhar Al Khanjari - Senior Manager of IT and Payments Department at CBO commented on winning this award: "This win comes as a great reward for us and shows the amount of effort spent on this project and it being worthy of appreciation, especially that the Electronic Check Clearing Solution proved its success and great added-value to all the clients from the initiation of its live run in 2009."

CBO has opted for ProgressSoft's solution to enact a sophisticated level of check clearing practices across the Omani banking body. This nationwide project entailed deploying an electronic network to connect CBO with all the Sultanate's 16 banks and their branches scattered over the 212,457 square kilometers.

"Before implementing the Electronic Check Clearing Solution, a check used to take 3 days to be cleared in Muscat, and about 2 weeks to be cleared if within a city outside Muscat. Now, all checks clear in 1 day within any location in the Sultanate of Oman. This great success forms a great motive for us to keep the hard work on developing the E-Service Sector" added Mr. Al Khanjari.

ProgressSoft has first introduced its world-first Electronic Image-based Check Clearing Solution (PS-ECC) in 2001 in The State of Qatar. This was followed by similar success stories with countrywide implementations of ProgressSoft's solution in Jordan, Sudan, Bahrain and Nepal, in addition to Oman. All banks in these countries, along with their branches, have successfully electronified their check clearing routines and are now operating a same-day clearing cycle while enjoying a wide range of benefits and cost cuttings following the upgrade.