Bahrain: TECHz Magazine – News Desk
BENEFIT, Bahrain’s leading fintech and electronic financial transactions provider, has officially integrated the Bahrain Credit Reference Bureau with the Oman Credit and Financial Information Centre (Mala’a). This milestone advances the creation of a unified, transparent credit information ecosystem across the Gulf Cooperation Council.
The technical integration follows a strategic bilateral agreement signed in August 2023 and executes a mandate from the 2016 GCC Supreme Council to establish a framework for cross-border credit data exchange. With Bahrain already connected to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, the addition of Oman establishes a robust, multi-nation financial data infrastructure.
Financial institutions can now instantly retrieve credit reports for commercial entities operating in the Sultanate of Oman seamlessly through the central Bahrain Credit Reference Bureau portal or via a dedicated API. This direct access allows lenders to embed data directly into their internal evaluation systems, significantly accelerating corporate onboarding by streamlining regional verification and approval workflows.
By replacing fragmented cross-border data with verified, factual credit histories issued by official national bureaus, banks can now conduct objective risk assessments. This integration enables financial institutions to accurately evaluate the total credit exposure and historical repayment behaviors of enterprises before extending regulated credit facilities.
Bridging this data gap provides the financial sector with a verifiable baseline for corporate credit, ensuring institutions can make faster, more confident financing decisions that support sustainable commercial investment and economic growth throughout the broader region.
