The Business Year

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Financial institutions focused on innovating new ways to deliver financial services are crucial to the government's efforts to develop an advanced financial market.

Ali Alshehri

Country Manager Saudi Arabia, PayTabs

We commenced operations five years ago with the aim of providing seamless payment solutions to the market. Small- and medium-scaled e-commerce merchants often found it tedious to procure payment gateway services and facilitate their clients’ online purchases due to high costs and lengthy procedures involved in acquiring and operating payment gateways. PayTabs facilitates e-commerce transactions with technology developed in-house. There were many challenges in the beginning, especially as the market was unfamiliar with payment gateway services. We commenced processing payments in Saudi Arabia and expanded into other GCC countries within a few years. We now have a presence in the MENA region, Southeast Asia, and East Asia. While our payment processing can facilitate transactions in up to 168 currencies, locally we strive to recruit and develop exceptional homegrown talent to maintain a personalized and local approach in our services. We provide start-ups with a seamless onboarding with affordable service fees and flexible pricing plans. Merchants seeking in-depth analysis of their corporate payments are offered business intelligence through smart tools found on their PayTabs Business Manager dashboard. We also target large-scale merchants by customizing our products and pricing plans to suit their needs. It is vital for businesses to understand the advantages of having an online presence in expanding their footprint.

Esam Alnahdi

CEO, HalalaH

HalalaH is a digital banking platform that enables individuals and SMEs to open accounts in less than 20 seconds and use this account to transfer and receive money within seconds. HalalaH was built in-house and our main edge is that we serve the needs of the local society and work on customizing our offering to solve our clients’ needs. For example, one sector that we serve is grocery shops; this sector was never targeted by the existing banking system, mainly because it had very specific needs and issues. HalalaH works on tailor-made solutions to make them fit for both businesses and individuals. We serve those who are not served or under-served. We are demand-driven, so when it comes to corporate, our target is definitely SMEs. We do not have any value to offer to large companies at the moment. When it comes to individuals, we always focus on segments that need services and solutions, such as students or blue-collar workers. Overall, the ecosystem is much better than it was before. There are no issues related to access to funding. However, there is a lack of talent. There is talent in this country, but we still need to make things easier to attract international talent that will play a great role in knowledge transfer.

Saleh Mosaibah

CEO, Saleh Mosaibah

STC Pay was the first non-traditional financial institution to be licensed by SAMA to perform payment transactions in the Kingdom. STC Pay’s vision is to induce cashless transactions. We are an integrated payment service provider, and we innovate ourselves according to the highest customer-oriented standards. STC Pay currently has two main services: payments and remittances. Under the payment division, we facilitate payments for all kinds of merchants and businesses, including traditional offline stores, e-commerce companies, utilities companies, and others. Payments via STC Pay are a matter of convenience, and we target POS situations where we can provide added value. We have already seen an increase in the use of STC Pay at gas stations, an area where cash dominates. We have shortlisted the most common user cases and are building our concept innovations around them. While running ongoing experiments on these user cases, we are able to learn from our failures and optimize our concept. For remittances, the end-user experience we provide is unique. We provide our customers with a solid experience and competitive price, which are two essential ingredients for remittance. Our partnership with Western Union underlines our strength in this area. It is not just about the value position today, but rather how fast one can move to create new value propositions for tomorrow.

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