Here’s how digital payments are rapidly changing the fintech space

The fintech industry has made huge leaps forward in powering cashless and digital payments around the world. Nowadays, pretty much anywhere you are, from a village square to a big city, money flows through taps, swipes, and clicks of your cards, apps, and devices. Nearly everyone on the planet is carrying a digital wallet for everyday transactions.

With e-commerce booming, consumers and businesses seek the fastest, easiest, and most secure ways to pay. To keep up with how people are using money, Mashreq Bank recently rolled out NeoPay, a paytech business aimed at simplifying payments for goods and services.

“The launch of NeoPay is a strategic move that will help fuel the growth of Mashreq’s payment business, and enable us to solidify our leadership role in the rapidly evolving payments space,” said Kartik Taneja, Executive Vice President, Head of Payments & Consumer Lending at Mashreq, which is headquartered in Dubai.

In the UAE and other countries, the wholly owned subsidiary is helping push fintech innovation forward.

Revolutionizing digital payments now

As one of the UAE’s biggest banks, Mashreq handles some $22 billion U.S. dollars in the annual volume of payments. The launch of NeoPay marks a move to merge and consolidate their existing merchant acquiring operations into a single platform. It comes at a time when digital payments are at an all-time high with more than 70% of individuals in the Middle East and North Africa willing to pay with credit cards or mobile phone apps, according to recent statistics.

Expanding a digital-first vision

The bank has embraced digital-first services as the way forward. As the fintech arm of the bank, NeoPay empowers seamless payments for merchants and consumers using advanced technology for lightning-fast card processing and merchant acquisition systems, as well as processing switches and point-of-sale inventory. For everyday shoppers, it means more convenient ways to settle your bill at a restaurant, pay back a friend, or purchase some sweet wireless speakers.

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Growing ‘buy now, pay later’ convenience

On the backend, NeoPay allows companies to collaborate with a bank that already has a large customer base and is investing heavily in fintech locally and globally. The bank recently put $10 million into a fintech company called Cashew, which is growing the “buy now, pay later” market in the UAE and Saudi Arabia through an app and a web-based platform. Cashew will also expand to Egypt soon.

Making settling up a tab with a friend or a restaurant easier

Reaching more globally, Mashreq also invested in Touché, a fintech company based in Singapore that is transforming the hospitality industry with Oracle-approved solutions. Restaurants, bars, and hotels can use a single certified device to connect their infrastructure and payment processing system. It has several modules for full-service and quick-service businesses, including Order@Table, Pay@Table, Benefit@Table, RoomChg@Table, and Order&Pay, and runs on a fully integrated, Android smart payment terminal.

Credit: Korrawin Khanta / EyeEm / Getty Images

Improving virtual cards for businesses and beyond

Working with Visa, Mashreq helped develop a new digital reconciliation platform to track, trace, and analyze company expense accounts in real-time. For large businesses, the benefits of having virtual cards include having more insight and protection against fraud. On the other end, Mashreq also invested in NymCard, the only banking as a service (BaaS) provider in the Middle East right now. This open application programming interface will enable businesses of all sizes to build payment card features.

These are just some of the exciting ways that Mashreq is catalyzing groundbreaking FinTech solutions that will improve digital customer service in the banking industry.

Mashreq is not associated with Mashable.