Use Emirates ID to pay utility bills, traffic fines

An Abu Dhabi-based bank has tied up with Emirates Identity Authority (Eida) to incorporate e-Dirham features into the Emirates ID.

The e-Dirham which is a payment initiative between The Ministry of Finance and the National Bank of Abu Dhabi will roll out the services expanding it to all existing users of Emirate ID.

What this means is that anyone who holds an e-Dirham account will now be able to activate the service on their Emirates ID and use the card to process all federal and local government payments include payment of all traffic fines and making utility bills.

“The exact procedure about how to enable the service on your card will be revealed within the next few weeks,” says a senior NBAD spokesperson.

Earlier, Al Hilal bank became the first bank to incorporate payment features into the Emirate ID when it enabled a service that allowed its customers use the card to withdraw cash and for money transfers across all bank ATMs.

The NBAD initiative, on the other hand, allows the use of Emirates ID as a pre-paid card.

According to the spokesperson, only the existing card holders will have to enable the service on their ID cards, all new cards issued from December 2014 will automatically have the feature incorporated.

Meanwhile, the number of active e-Dirham card users has touched one million. The Ministry of Finance celebrated the achievement at a simple ceremony at its stand at Gitex Shopper on Tuesday.

“We have many more cards that have been issued. But we have now reached one million active users. Currently we achieve about 120,000 transactions on an average every day,” he said.

According tothe spokesperson, the expansion of service to Emirates ID will automatically increase the numbers to about 6 to 7 million.  “We are hoping that more users will start using the service soon,” he said.

An e-Dirham card can be topped up in branches across the country. “Soon you will be able to even top up the card through your mobile as well,” added the spokesperson.

While a user of Master or Visa enabled e-Dirham card can use it anywhere in the world to make any sort of online and direct payments, the Emirates ID will currently only work with payment related to UAE government entities.

“Soon we will incorporate features that will allow the card to be used at third-party retail outlets. We are rolling it out in phases,” he said.

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