The Payment Landscape in the Maldives

The financial sector of the Maldives is dominated by the commercial banking sector. Currently, there are eight banks in the Maldives, of which two are locally incorporated. A single bank dominates the retail banking segment, with approximately 75 percent of bank account holdings and over 80 percent of the retail payment transactions, along with key payments infrastructure. The rest of the financial sector is comprised of five insurance companies and two other finance companies which cater to the leasing and housing finance markets as well as the stock exchange. The lack of an ideal level of competition and the shallowness of financial markets are challenges to the development of both the financial sector and the payments ecosystem.

Civic Moneta Capital has obtained a digital banking license from the Government of Maldives with a minimum investment requirement of USD 48 million. This is the minimum scope of this project and here we will show the case of the whole scope of this development to start commence this digital bank by the 2nd quarter of the year 2021.