Al Etihad Payments has appointed Aref Al Ramli as chief executive officer, placing a long standing figure in Emirati digital banking at the head of the company that builds and runs the country's national payment rails.
Al Etihad Payments is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates, and it is the entity through which the regulator has taken domestic payments infrastructure into its own hands rather than leaving it to the commercial banks or to the international card schemes. The appointment takes effect in November 2026.
Al Ramli arrives with more than 24 years in financial services, most of it spent on the digital side of banking rather than in its branch network. He was most recently chief digital officer at Al Hilal Bank. Before that he was chief executive officer of Emirates Digital Wallet, the interbank venture behind the country's first shared mobile payment scheme, where he led an initiative drawing in 16 banks. Earlier he ran digital banking and innovation at Mashreq, where he oversaw the launch of its digital retail bank and its digital business banking proposition.
He also chaired the digital committee of the UAE Banks Federation between 2017 and 2020, which placed him at the table where the sector's collective position on payments was formed.
His mandate, as the company described it, is to lead work on the national payment infrastructure and to widen adoption of its platforms among financial institutions and payment service providers. That covers two programmes that have moved quickly. Aani, the instant payments platform, has become the domestic rail for account to account transfers, and Jaywan, the national card scheme, began issuance through local financial institutions during the year and has since been extended through announced arrangements with Mastercard and with UnionPay International.
Figures circulated alongside the appointment, which the company has not restated in a release of its own, put enrolment on Aani at 14.7 million users and volume for the year at more than 192 million transactions worth about 545 billion dirhams. Those numbers should be read as reported rather than as audited disclosure.
Saif Humaid Al Dhaheri, chairman of the board of managers at Al Etihad Payments, tied the appointment to the country's wider economic ambitions, saying that those ambitions depend on dependable payment infrastructure and that the incoming chief executive's experience positions him well to lead the company through its next phase of development. Al Ramli said his ambition was for the company's platforms to become a natural part of how people and businesses across the country pay every day.
The appointment continues a pattern across the Gulf of central banks recruiting commercial digital banking executives into infrastructure roles, on the view that the harder problem is no longer building a rail but persuading banks and merchants to route volume onto it. The company did not name an outgoing chief executive and did not describe the change as a succession.
