AFAQ is the GCC's own cross-border RTGS — owned by the six Gulf central banks, run by the Gulf Payments Company. Send in your currency, receive in theirs, settled across central banks in real time, at fixed conversion rates.
AFAQ — the "Arabian Gulf System for Financial Automated Quick Payment Transfer" — is the real-time gross settlement service for cross-currency, cross-border payments between the six Gulf Cooperation Council countries: Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait. It is owned by those countries' national central banks and operated by the Gulf Payments Company (GPC), established by the GCC Supreme Council in 2016 and headquartered in Riyadh.
AFAQ is the Gulf's purpose-built answer to a narrow problem: settling payments between GCC states without routing through external correspondents. Where Buna serves the broader Arab region and international counterparties, AFAQ is GCC-only — tighter scope, central-bank ownership, RTGS finality.
AFAQ is central-bank infrastructure, operated by the Gulf Payments Company out of Riyadh (with an Abu Dhabi branch).
Send in your currency, receive in theirs, converted at a fixed rate — FX is predictable, not market-variable.
Runs through national RTGS systems — gross, real-time, final settlement between central banks.
KSA + Bahrain (Dec 2021), Kuwait (Mar 2022), UAE (Dec 2023); Oman and Qatar to follow — verify current corridors.
AFAQ links each member's national RTGS system. A payment is sent in the currency of the sending country, converted at a fixed exchange rate, and received in the currency of the receiving country — settled gross, in real time, central bank to central bank. Because it runs through the national RTGS infrastructures rather than commercial correspondents, settlement is final and the FX is predictable.
The rollout was phased. The cross-currency AFAQ service went live in December 2021 between Saudi Arabia and Bahrain; Kuwait joined in March 2022 and the UAE in December 2023. Oman and Qatar were expected to follow. So "GCC-wide" is the destination, not yet fully the present — check live participant status for any corridor you depend on.
| AFAQ (GCC-RTGS) | Buna | |
|---|---|---|
| Owner | The six GCC central banks | Arab Monetary Fund |
| Scope | GCC member states only | Arab region + international counterparties |
| Settlement | RTGS, fixed-rate cross-currency | Multi-currency clearing & settlement |
| Operator | Gulf Payments Company | Arab Regional Payments Clearing & Settlement Org. |
If your flows are strictly intra-GCC, AFAQ is the most direct rail available: central-bank settlement, fixed FX, real-time finality, no external correspondent. For banks and treasurers running Gulf corridors, the practical questions are whether both ends are live on AFAQ (Oman and Qatar lagged the others) and whether your bank is connected through its national RTGS.
The honest scoping point: AFAQ does nothing outside the GCC. The moment a corridor touches a non-GCC Arab country you are into Buna territory; the moment it touches the wider world you are back to SWIFT and correspondent banking. Map your corridors to the right rail rather than hoping one covers everything.
Strategically, AFAQ and Buna together are the Gulf and Arab region building independent cross-border settlement — less dependence on dollar-clearing intermediaries, more regional control. For institutions where correspondent cost, speed or geopolitical exposure is a live concern, that is the reason to evaluate both seriously rather than defaulting to SWIFT.