اخبار السودان – وطن نيوز
اخر اخبار السودان اليوم – اخبار السودان العاجلة
W6nnews.com ==== وطن === تاريخ النشر – 2026-07-05 23:39:00
Cancellation of the transformer’s license: procedural shortcomings or lack of accountability? Omar Sayed Ahmed | Researcher in Sudanese political economy Independent banking and financial expert Email: o.sidahmed09@gmail.com July 2026 As an extension of my previous article “Cancellation of the Al-Asjad license…if true, it is not the end of the matter.” In this article, I present another angle of the same issue, this time related to the manner in which the license was originally granted – not the fate of a specific company after its cancellation. The issue is not a specific company or a specific person. The news of the cancellation of the Al-Asjad license – if true – sparked a public debate. It often revolved around a specific company, or specific people whose names were linked to the file. This focus, although understandable, distances the discussion from the essence of the real problem. The issue is not a specific company that made a mistake or was right, nor is it a specific person who is held accountable or acquitted. Rather, it is the method of granting licenses themselves: How was a license to operate a national payment transmitter granted – along with at least three similar licenses for other companies whose full number we do not know precisely, nor the details of their files – without it being clear to public opinion who decided, on what basis, and with what guarantees. In other words: If the name “Al-Asjad” in this article were replaced with the name of any other of the three licensed companies, The questions asked here remain completely correct without any modification. This alone is an indication that the problem is structural and not individual. The sequence that should not be ignored: How is the license granted in the first place? Granting a license to operate a payment transformer does not happen with a momentary decision, but rather goes through – hypothetically – a series of steps: The company submits an official application, according to requirements and standards set in advance by the Central Bank of Sudan (capital, technical structure, compliance procedures, internal governance, and perhaps others). Based on the fulfillment of some of these requirements and the commitment to fulfill all requirements before granting the full license – or what is assumed to be the fulfillment of it – the company is granted initial approval, provided that the final approval is granted after the completion of building the system and the completion of fulfilling all the requirements before granting the actual license (such as the one that was granted to Al-Asjad) in preparation for final approval and an actual license. This sequence, if it takes place as it is supposed, means that “Al-Asjad” and other companies did not obtain anything in a vacuum, nor With a hasty decision on its part, it did not invest large sums of money in building its systems without initial approval from the Central Bank. Rather, it applied to a regulatory body, the Central Bank of Sudan, and obtained initial approvals from it according to standards that it set, not it. This places the primary responsibility for any potential shortcomings in the file on the donor party before the applicant party that invested according to a conclusive written and conditional covenant from the Central Bank. This is because the experience and financial and technical capabilities of the company are usually required to grant the initial license, and the final approval or license requires the completion of building the system and its compliance with the standards of the Central Bank. This means that the Central Bank evaluated the financial and operational capabilities of the company before granting the initial certification and left the final certification until the system (the converter) that the company will use is evaluated until the last stage as a condition for the final certification, which we assume was granted after evaluating the converter and its compliance with the conditions of the Bank of Sudan. The burdens that companies bore based on the initial approval. The initial approval is not a formality without effect. The company that acquires it practically moves to the implementation stage: contracts with technology and infrastructure suppliers, hiring cadres, financial and administrative obligations towards partners and shareholders, and perhaps interoperating agreements with banks or other parties. All of these burdens are borne based on legitimate confidence that the regulatory authority that granted the initial approval has studied the file sufficiently to confirm this approval later if the company adheres to what was agreed upon. Most importantly: the granting of the license was not a secret matter, but was announced – according to the circulation – in the presence of leaders in the state, giving it an official declared status and not just an internal administrative procedure. This raises the ceiling of responsibility: when a decision is announced in the presence of official leaders, then retracting it later with a silent administrative decision – without a public explanation of the foundations upon which the cancellation was based – becomes a matter deserving of accountability, not a passing justification. The question of accountability: How does the administration decide to cancel so simply? If it is true that the management of the Central Bank of Sudan decided to cancel the license of a particular company based on what was raised about it in the media or popularly, then this in itself raises a more serious problem than the fate of the company itself: if the foundations upon which the granting of the license was based Essentially – studies, controls and reviews – are sufficient and solid, and should not be shaken by public opinion pressure alone without new documented data. If these foundations are insufficient or do not exist at all, then the real problem precedes the cancellation by months, and lies at the moment of granting, not at the moment of withdrawal. In both cases, the decision – however it is taken – reveals the absence of a clear and announced framework governing both the granting and withdrawal of licenses, which makes every future decision vulnerable to the same doubt: Is it based on fixed standards, or on the pressure of public opinion at a specific moment? Questions that await an answer from the entity or person actually responsible for granting this type of license within a bank Central Sudan? Is the decision individual or does it pass through a committee or council? What are the foundations and standards according to which the four licenses were granted? Are these standards unified and announced, or are they assigned to different committees for each company separately? Has the license been granted and announced prior to comprehensive legal and technical studies evaluating the impact on the state’s existing investment in (EBS) and on the protection of depositors’ data? Are these studies documented and can be referred to? Were any officials held accountable for approving the granting of the license if it was proven that there were deficiencies? Was anyone held responsible for the cancellation decision if it was proven that it was taken without sufficient basis? What is the fate of the other three licenses? Will it be subject to review according to the same standards that were applied – or were said to have been applied – to Al-Asjad? Are there clear procedures, controls and standards published to the public related to the application process and granting of initial and final licenses and the required conditions, and if they exist, how was an initial and final approval granted to an entity on the assumption that it complied with all the standards, but later the approval was withdrawn on the pretext of not adhering to the same standards that the Central Bank stated it had adhered to, and the license was granted on the basis of that. Is there a strategy? Or detailed controls published for the involvement of the private sector in banking technology services and approved by the senior management of the Central Bank? The suspicion of unprofessionalism and irresponsible dealings towards (EBS) The matter does not stop at the borders of the four private companies, but rather extends to the way in which the Central Bank of Sudan’s management dealt with the state institution that already existed in this field. The Electronic Banking Services Company (EBS) is not a competing private entity, but rather an institution in which the Central Bank of Sudan owns a 49% stake, in partnership with the Union of Banks, which owns 21%, and Sudatel, which is partly owned by the state. The Central Bank chairs the EBS Board of Directors, and there is a representative of the Payment Systems Department on the board, in addition to representatives from the Union of Banks and a representative of Sudatel. EBS operates on a non-profit basis, and provides many services for free or at a nominal price determined by the Central Bank, which supports the company by bringing in equipment so that it can continue as a non-profit company. The operating surplus in one of the company’s years did not exceed more than 22%, which was recycled in the development of the company, and not a single pound of these surpluses was distributed to any of the shareholders. The essence of EBS remains a non-profit company that aims to support banking technology and achieve the strategy of the Central Bank and its technical arm in doing so. The EBS model is considered a prevalent model in many countries, enabling the central bank to impose easy and easy oversight on all banking transactions, in addition to the presence of a technical arm that allows the central bank to implement its technical strategies. This means that any decision that opens the way for private competitors to perform the same task, without prior clarification of its impact on an institution in which the state owns this large share, is not just an ordinary regulatory decision, but rather a decision that affects an existing investment of the Central Bank of Sudan itself and its partners. EBS faced fierce resistance from those who sought to control financial transactions, whether by transferring the balance or through private sector companies that aspired to control financial transactions away from oversight and in pursuit of making a profit at the expense of the citizen. Even some parties in the country adopted the trend of getting rid of EBS, and funding for the company was cut off while prices continued to be controlled, which led the company to losses in 2020, and the company continued to operate with out-of-date equipment that had long exceeded its expected lifespan. The war was an opportunity to destroy the company, as the national switch was withdrawn and the sensitive systems that had been financed by the Central Bank were withdrawn from the company and it became without systems. Many competencies were eliminated. The Central Bank committed to operating the systems that were operated by EBS, but it failed miserably, which harmed the banking sector due to the lack of the national switch and interconnection, and the banking sector was severely damaged. Despite the siege and drought imposed on it, EBS Company tried to restore some necessary services using software that was developed locally due to the lack of funding. It succeeded in helping the banking sector, while the Bank of Sudan and the private companies that approved interbank transfers failed. After the appointment of the current governor, he decided that the Central Bank would support EBS, and a director for the company was appointed from among the Central Bank’s employees, but it seems that the governor’s decisions are facing hidden resistance from inside and outside the Central Bank, and that strengthening EBS is not accepted by many. What reinforces the suspicion of unprofessionalism here is the absence of any public and comprehensive explanation for this contradiction: How is investment in (EBS) enhanced at the beginning of the year, and then competing licenses for it are granted a few months later, without the Central Bank of Sudan issuing a clear position on the expected impact of this expansion on its institution, which is partly owned by it and the banks? And Sudatel? Dealing with this file in this way – announcing new licenses without a public assessment of the impact on an existing institution in which the Central Bank has a major stake – is in itself an indication that the decision was not subject to an integrated institutional review that takes into account the interests of the state as a whole, not the interest of one party or another. The date here is accurate and important: the strategic acquisition of (EBS) was officially announced on January 15, 2026 specifically, that is, only a few months before the granting of the four special licenses. Most importantly, the Central Bank of Sudan not only strengthened its ownership in EBS at this point, but also continued to expand its operational role in the following months: the company was officially approved as a service office for the global SWIFT network for financial messages and bank transfers, and it also took charge of restoring the operation of the national switch and completing comprehensive settlement operations between all banks during the first half of 2026. This makes the institutional contradiction more apparent, not less: at a time when the Central Bank of Sudan was expanding the powers (EBS), granting it international accreditation and a pivotal role in the national transfer and settlement between banks. It granted – in approximately the same time frame – independent licenses to four private companies to perform tasks of the same nature. Such a coincidence between empowering a state-owned institution and opening the door to its own competitors, without a single institutional explanation that combines the two lines, remains in itself one of the most prominent manifestations of the shortcomings presented by this file. Additional shortcomings confirmed by parallel comparisons. Other analyzes that approached the event from a different angle reach the same structural conclusion. The successful international experiences in operating payment switches – Mada in Saudi Arabia, NPCI in India, PesaLink in Kenya, and InstaPay in Egypt – all agree that the Central Bank maintains direct supervision over the national switch, and does not leave it to a single private company, because this facility is as critical as the electricity or communications network: any malfunction or penetration in it does not affect a single company but rather paralyzes the entire banking system. This adds an angle of deficiency that this article did not detail previously: even if it is assumed that granting The four licenses were conducted according to formally sound procedures. The deeper question remains without a declared answer, which is: Who actually owns these four companies, and do the Central Bank of Sudan or the banks have an influential stake in them, as is the case in Mada Saudi Arabia? The absence of disclosure of the ownership structure – not just the existence of a license – is precisely what makes the multiplicity of private operators closer to a monopoly risk than to a healthy diversification of service. It also remains unanswered: Have there been issued, before or after the launch of these licenses, announced regulations to protect customer data, a regulatory ceiling on fees that prevents the citizen from being burdened with a monopoly cost, a transparent and independent mechanism for resolving customer complaints, and an announced plan for business continuity in the event of service interruption? These questions – like the questions of accountability for the decision to grant and cancel – all lead to one conclusion: that the failure is not in a specific company, but rather in the absence of an integrated and declared regulatory framework that precedes the granting of any license for a sovereign banking infrastructure, and does not follow it after the occurrence of public controversy. The bottom line is that the story is not about a company that succeeded or failed, nor about a person who made a mistake or was wrong, but rather about a system of granting and withdrawing licenses for a sovereign financial infrastructure that seems to lack fixed and declared standards and clear accountability at every stage. As long as these questions remain without an official and transparent answer, any decision – whether granted or cancelled – will remain open to doubt, not because it is necessarily wrong, but because the way in which it was taken did not inform public opinion of its basis. God is behind the intention and the path is written.
