Sharjah Municipality to stop receiving cash payments from July 15

Gulf Today, Staff Reporter

Dealing with cash in all revenues and fines transactions at Sharjah City Municipality has been stopped as of 15 July 2020, the municipality announced.

This comes as part of the municipality’s efforts to constantly upgrade and develop its work system, provide the best services to customers and offer easy and smooth methods for paying fees for all transactions.

The decision applies only to the revenues and fines transactions, while the deposit system will continue to be operated as before via the Commercial Bank of Dubai.

The decision to stop dealing with cash comes as part the continuous efforts exerted by the largest service provider to offer high-quality services to the public and is consistent with its digital system, which seeks to ease procedures for customers by creating various channels for payment of service fees, Thabet Al Tarifi, Director General of Sharjah City Municipality, said.

For this purpose, the municipality constantly launches smart apps and depends on the ‘Tahseel’ system, which is the latest technology and international standards, while providing other methods of payment within the digital system, he added.

This is in line with the digital transformation in the Emirate of Sharjah and with the municipality’s bid to ease procedures for customers in co-operation with the emirate’s Central Finance Department, he said.

Meanwhile, Dr Abdullah Ali Al Qaidi, Assistant Director General of Corporate Support Sector, explained that working with a smart payment system and canceling cash transactions contributes to reducing costs, considering that this system is safer and is in line with the municipality’s quality policy. The system enables the public to pay fees of all the services provided by the municipality including rent regulation, public parking, engineering, public health, agriculture and environment, among others, he added.

For his part, Hamad Al Hammadi, Director of Finance Department at Sharjah City Municipality, affirmed that the municipality provided several ways to pay revenues fees via mobile phones after dealing with cash had been stopped. These include ‘Tahseel’ smart card, Emirates ID card, which can be topped up via the bank that the customers deals with, where the customer can ship it with a balance from his bank, banking cards (credit or debit) via POS or online, or global e-wallets (Google Pay, Apple Pay, Samsung Pay), he added.