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Saudi Arabia Report
Marcopolis presents the Saudi Arabia Report focused on the investments, doing business, economy and other topics featuring interviews with key executives. The sectors under review in this issue are industry, real-estate, ICT, investments, banking sector, telecom sector and many more.
InterviewsMarch 14, 2022
Leading Online Payment Solutions Provider HyperPay to Expand its Product Range in Saudi Arabia
Muhannad Ebwini, Co-Founder and CEO of HyperPay
- Written by Sandra Francisco
- Published: March 14, 2022
Interview with Muhannad Ebwini, Co-Founder and CEO of HyperPay
What is your assessment of the payment solutions sector in Saudi Arabia and the region? What are the latest news?
HyperPay is a complete B2B FinTech end-to-end platform for banks and merchants. We connect merchants to banks with several online payment solutions. Currently, we are active in multiple countries like Jordan, KSA, UAE, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, and are expanding into new markets in North Africa. The market we are working with is big and it is growing fast, even for mature countries like KSA and UAE. We are witnessing above 100% year over year growth for HyperPay and in the market in general. The adoption of new technologies for FinTech in the market and from regulators is quite fast. For example, in KSA, 20 years ago, the bill payment technology called Sadad was introduced where you can pay an invoice for your governmental services from your bank account or from any ATM machine. In 2016, with Vision 2030, KSA decided to digitize all transactions in the country. They started to build their own local payment schemes called Mada which are debit cards and ATM cards in KSA. Now, whenever you are using any ATM card in KSA that is branded Mada, the transaction will be local. Saudi Arabia has also built a sandbox for any FinTech company to try products in the market. Today the market is huge. We have about $9 billion worth of ecommerce transactions.
What products and services do you offer?
The demand from the merchants is increasing rapidly. We have plans to push three new products in the market in the coming year in Saudi Arabia.
In some countries, we are only a payment service provider. In other countries, we are a payment gateway – a technology provider. What makes HyperPay different, especially in the mature markets, is that we are specialized in producing localized products for the market, the private and the public sectors in each. For example, in KSA, the market required an automated split technology where we can split the transaction between multiple accounts and we deposit the money real-time in different accounts for business models such as marketplaces and multi-vendor platforms. This is not a financial transaction from the payment network, but a normal transfer. We built this service over a technology that is already available in KSA called SARIEE which is the network that connects the banks together in real-time transactions in KSA. We are taking this product now to other markets like UAE, Jordan. Also, HyperBill, a bill invoicing technology, or a link payment as it sometimes is called is another product developed by HyperPay. It is a standalone product designed for people who do not have a mobile application or website. They can create, manage, and send invoices on one platform, and collect payments from customers much more efficiently. HyperSight is another service we offer which is an AI platform for merchants where they can monitor their transactions. We developed this tool to help merchants improve their business performance, acceptance rate, understand their user behavior and make much faster, data-backed decisions.
Do you see the sector and HyperPay continuing in this direction in the next three years? What will be the next developments?
We learned a lot from the impacts of the pandemic and the disruption it created in the industry. The most important thing that we learned is how to be agile and how to move quickly in the market. Today, HyperPay’s plan for the coming three years is to expand our product range because the demand from the merchants is increasing rapidly. We have plans to push three new products in the market in the coming year in Saudi Arabia. This kind of agility where we can respond to each market is what differentiates HyperPay. We have big plans in the coming three years.
Who are the companies, partners, or clients that you work with?
We mainly work with clients from the public and private sectors. Most of our merchants from the private sector are fast growing SMEs or large enterprises. But we also work with startups and have customized products to fit their needs.
What is your inspiration? What drives you to do what you do? What business philosophy do you follow?
Payments! I have 23 years of experience in ecommerce and payments. I have the passion for that and I know that the market is ready now, more than when we first started. I spent a lot of time educating the community about this sector. Starting something from the beginning in the region and seeing it grow and become bigger every day is what gives me a sense of achievement. My team grew from just myself to now over 100 employees in different markets, from different nationalities. Now is an interesting time to be in the FinTech and payment sector in the region. When we started, it was still in the very early stages. What I’ve learnt from this experience, and as an entrepreneur is to always listen carefully to market trends, and move fast. And that strategic collaboration is key to success.
ABOUT MUHANNAD EBWINI: With over 18 years of experience in the online, ecommerce, gaming, and payment industries, Muhannad Ebwini was able to lead the business to its current position as one of the Middle East’s fastest growing and widely successful online payment businesses. It is regarded as highly innovative and is seen as one of the new generation payment service providers.
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