Sanad Centres Hit 400,000 Transactions, Add E-Invoice Rule

Oman's network of Sanad service centres, the small-business-run counters that handle everything from company licensing to residency paperwork, processed more than 400,000 transactions in the first half of 2026. At the same time, the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Investment Promotion has quietly tightened the rules on how those centres bill customers, requiring every single transaction to carry a digital invoice before any fee changes hands.

📋 Key Takeaways

• Sanad's 922 authorised centres processed over 400,000 transactions in H1 2026, covering roughly 400 government and private services, according to an Oman News Agency report carried by Times of Oman on August 16, 2026.
• The network has created more than 2,200 jobs for Omani nationals operating these small franchise-style centres.
• As of August 10, 2026, the Ministry now requires centre operators to generate an electronic invoice through the Sanad Services portal and hand it to the customer before collecting payment, according to a report on the directive.
• Transaction volume nearly tripled quarter-on-quarter, from roughly 131,000 in Q1 2026 to over 400,000 by the half-year mark, based on the Ministry's own quarterly disclosures.
• The Ministry says it wants to turn Sanad centres into "smart, multi-service hubs" within five years, with artificial intelligence systems, expanded digital service shares, and a formal classification framework for centres.

🧾 What Changed This Month

The headline number comes from an official mid-year progress report released by the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Investment Promotion and carried by the Oman News Agency: 922 authorised Sanad centres nationwide completed over 400,000 transactions in the first six months of 2026, spanning about 400 services delivered in partnership with government bodies and private entities.

Fathi Nasser Al Mahamouli, Assistant Director of Sanad Service Centres at the Ministry, described the network's role plainly.

Separately, and just six days before that report, the Ministry issued a more concrete rule change. As reported on August 10, 2026, every Sanad centre operator must now generate an electronic invoice through the Sanad Services portal and give it to the customer before receiving any payment. The invoice has to itemise every charge, including the centre's own service fee and any government fees collected on behalf of other entities. The Ministry framed the move as a transparency and consumer-protection measure, giving customers a digital paper trail for what they are being charged and why.

📈 From 131,000 to 400,000 in One Quarter

The growth trajectory is the more interesting part of the story. In Q1 2026, the same 922-centre network processed just over 131,000 transactions, according to an Oman Observer report published on April 19, 2026, which also cited Mohammed bin Salim al Mashaikhi, Director of the Sanad Service Centres Department, and noted that 815 trainees completed specialised training and 213 field visits were carried out for quality monitoring in that quarter alone.

That means transaction volume nearly tripled between the first and second quarters, even as the number of authorised centres held steady at 922. The Ministry attributes the jump to an expanding roster of digitally linked government and private entities, wider adoption of the Sanad electronic portal, and broader awareness among entrepreneurs, SMEs and residents about which services the network now covers.

🤖 The Five-Year AI Roadmap

Beyond the transaction count, the Ministry used the mid-year update to restate its longer-term ambition: turning Sanad into a network of "smart, multi-service hubs" over the next five years. That plan, per the same Oman News Agency report, includes expanding the range of services offered, raising the share of transactions completed digitally, introducing artificial intelligence systems into centre operations, creating a formal classification framework to grade centres by performance, and deepening public-private partnerships.

The Ministry is also building out performance measurement infrastructure, tracking transaction completion times, first-visit resolution rates and beneficiary satisfaction scores, the kind of operational data that would be needed before AI-assisted triage or service-routing tools could realistically be layered onto the network.

This sits alongside other government service upgrades already under way in Oman this year. Just a day before the Sanad update, Oman's e-attestation service marked its own scaling milestone, extending digital document verification to 66 countries. Sanad's expansion follows a similar pattern: incremental service growth backed by increasingly detailed public reporting, rather than a single dramatic launch. Nationally, the push fits the broader digitisation drive detailed in Oman's count of 2,277 digitised government services, of which Sanad centres are a key delivery channel for citizens and small businesses who still prefer an in-person counter over a self-service app.

🇴🇲 Why This Matters for Oman

Sanad centres are not a flashy AI product, but they are one of the most consequential digital-government channels in the country: a franchise network of Omani-run small businesses that acts as the human interface for hundreds of government and private services. A near-tripling of transaction volume in a single quarter suggests real uptake, not just capacity sitting idle. The new e-invoicing requirement matters just as much: it forces transparency into a channel that handles fee collection on behalf of dozens of entities, and it lays digital groundwork (structured, itemised, portal-generated invoices) that will make it easier to eventually automate parts of the network with AI, exactly as the Ministry's five-year roadmap intends. For entrepreneurs who operate these centres, for the Omani nationals they employ, and for citizens who still need a physical counter for licensing or residency paperwork, this is digital transformation delivered in increments rather than headlines, but it is measurable, dated, and backed by an official ministry directive.