ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - All public employees and salary recipients in the Kurdistan Region will be required to receive their salaries digitally through personal bank accounts under the MyAccount project, the Region’s finance ministry announced Sunday, adding that cash payments will no longer be available starting at the beginning of 2026.
“In accordance with all agreements and decisions of the Iraqi Council of Ministers and the federal finance ministry, the end of this year [2025] is the final deadline for opening bank accounts for all employees and salary recipients in the Kurdistan Region,” the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) finance ministry said in a statement on Facebook.
“Salaries will be disbursed via a digital system [the MyAccount project], meaning the distribution of salaries in cash will cease to exist,” the statement added. It further warned that “anyone who does not participate in the MyAccount project will not receive a salary and will be held personally responsible.”
The MyAccount project, announced in 2023 by Prime Minister Masrour Barzani, is part of the KRG’s initiative to digitize salary payments and improve the disbursement process. It enables public employees to receive payments directly through the banking system.
Speaking at the Middle East Peace and Security (MEPS) Forum in Duhok on Wednesday, Prime Minister Barzani said that Erbil is “focusing on having MyAccount to provide bank accounts to every individual in the country. When they have that, then they can use the services that the bank offers.”
The finance ministry’s statement comes as the initiative enters its final stage. The deadline was established under a February agreement between Baghdad and Erbil requiring all public employees to open private bank accounts by the end of 2025 to ensure salary payments.
Aziz Ahmad, deputy chief of staff to Prime Minister Barzani, said in an October post on X that nearly 550,000 employees and pensioners received their salaries digitally that month. “The long queues we’ve all seen in the harsh winters and summers have ended,” he added.
“With this [October] payment, nearly $400 million will circulate through the Region’s financial sector - allowing the country’s top banks in MyAccount to focus on new products, loans/credit, and help grow the economy,” he added.
For more than a decade, public employees in the Kurdistan Region have struggled with severe financial uncertainty amid ongoing disputes between Baghdad and Erbil. Salaries have often been delayed, reduced, or at times not paid at all.
The Iraqi government has repeatedly failed to release the Kurdistan Region’s share of the federal budget on time, often accusing Erbil of not meeting its financial obligations - a claim the KRG consistently denies.
So far this year, civil servants in the Region have received salaries for only eight months, while their September salaries remain pending. Their counterparts in federal Iraq, meanwhile, have been paid on time throughout the year - a disparity that has weakened market performance in the Kurdistan Region.
Kurdish officials hope that the full implementation of MyAccount will help ensure more consistent disbursement of civil servant salaries in the Region.