KRG official publicly criticizes Iraq’s Trade Bank over delays to ATM rollout and bank cards

ERBIL — A senior official in the Kurdistan Regional Government publicly criticized Iraq’s Trade Bank on Wednesday, citing significant delays and insufficient cooperation in the rollout of a high-profile digital banking initiative intended to modernize public salary payments.

The initiative, known as My Account, launched in September 2023, aiming to allow government employees in the Kurdistan Region to receive salaries digitally via bank-issued cards, reducing dependency on cash and increasing financial transparency. TBI was among several banks selected for participation.

“We are pleased to announce that the Trade Bank of Iraq is now part of the My Account project to digitize salary payments in the Kurdistan Region,” the ministry had said in a statement last year. Although welcomed in May 2024 by the Kurdistan Ministry of Finance, TBI’s participation has become a source of concern.

Nearly a year later, officials say the bank has fallen short of its commitments.

Aziz Ahmed, deputy chief of staff to KRG Prime Minister Masrour Barzani and the official leading the My Account team, spoke candidly to 964media. “It’s true, this is the first time we are publicly expressing our concerns about one of the banks in the My Account project, which is TBI,” he said. “But the scale of the issues with this bank can no longer be overlooked.”

Ahmed explained that the KRG has been waiting for over a year for TBI to fulfill a pledge to install 100 ATMs. “Despite over 40,000 requests from public employees in the Kurdistan Region to open accounts with the bank, the ATM installation process hasn’t moved forward, and the issuance of My Account cards has also been delayed,” he said.

The delay, according to Ahmed, is not just administrative but has practical consequences. “The delay in delivering ATMs and distributing bank cards has affected the speed of the banking rollout and has harmed public employees in the region,” he said.

Other banks participating in the program have also experienced occasional technical setbacks, but those were typically resolved without long-term disruption. “The level of difficulty we’ve had with TBI is different and ongoing,” Ahmed said. “Issues faced by other banks, such as temporary ATM outages, were addressed and solved. That has not been the case with TBI.”

According to the latest data obtained by 964media from the My Account project, there are approximately 650 ATMs available across the Kurdistan Region—many newly installed as part of the initiative. The project aims to expand this network to over 1,200 ATMs, reaching beyond major cities to include towns and remote areas.

This expansion is intended to ease salary access for the Kurdistan Regional Government’s 1.2 million public sector employees—roughly one ATM for every 1000 workers.

Eight banks are currently participating: BBAC, Cihan Bank, RT Bank, Bank of Baghdad, Iraqi Islamic Bank, National Bank of Iraq, Trade Bank of Iraq, and the International Development Bank.

964media has learned that the project has registered around 750,000 employees so far, with more than 450,000 having received their bank cards, enabling them to withdraw salaries from ATMs after being paid directly to their individual bank accounts.

The project has vowed to register all public sector employees for digital banking accounts by the end of this year.

Ahmed said the KRG has formally raised the issue with both the Central Bank of Iraq and the office of Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani. “Despite our repeated official communications and efforts to resolve the problems with the bank at the highest levels, the response and cooperation have not met expectations.”

Frustrated by the lack of progress, the KRG has opted to go public. “The lack of a satisfactory outcome from those efforts has left us no choice but to make our concerns public in the spirit of transparency,” Ahmed said.

My Account functions as an alternative to Baghdad’s Tawtin (localization) program. In February 2024, Iraq’s Federal Supreme Court ruled that salaries for public employees in the Kurdistan Region must be paid directly by the federal government, rather than through the KRG’s allocated share of the national budget.

In September 2024, public sector workers in Erbil and Sulaymaniyah expressed growing frustration as some ATMs ran out of cash, leaving many unable to access their delayed wages. However, officials overseeing the My Account project say those problems have since been addressed and that the system is now operating more smoothly. There have been no reports of widespread issues since.