FEATURE level.“ North Africa, especially Morocco has a lot of competent people on the payment side, and that is a domain we always look at. We have been getting a lot of inquiries from Africa.”
During the early part of their engagement, Business Rules Solutions and OMA Emirates jointly developed a new platform switch in less than one year, that has been certified for global payment systems. Prior to the OMA Emirates engagement, Business Rules Solutions provided payment solutions in North and West Africa.
Explains El Habib Alouah, Managing Director North Africa, Business Rules Solutions-OMA Emirates Group,“ We have products that complement the core switch like Easy Reconciliation, Easy ATM Monitoring. For OMA Emirates, they found a software provider that was professional, that developed in good time and also in good quality, the core switch and switch platform, which is the basis for all OMA Emirates products.”
On the flip side, Habib Alouah is expecting OMA Emirates to help sell its solutions into Middle East markets.
Over the longer term, Sangal expects to build new industry products with Habib Alouah’ s team based in Morocco and believes the two businesses have a good fit. For OMA Emirates, Business Rules Solutions is now its extension into French speaking African countries. Having established the partnership agreement, Business Rules Solutions-OMA Emirates Group now handles inquiries and
CMS process flow opportunities coming out of this market that were previously directed to OMA Emirates. This saves considerably for OMA Emirates on the cost of following up the inquiries and the complexity of preparing French and Arabic language proposals and documentation.
While entering, Africa is part of OMA Emirates controlled expansion spree, Sangal is aware of the vast differences between the two payment markets. In Africa, cash is king but the same does not hold true in Middle East. As an example, in UAE there are 40 million cards issued against a population of 9 million approximately. OMA Emirates has a market share of 23 % of credit cards issued, which is growing at close to 5 % annually. The growth in card transactions across the Middle East is growing at 9 % annually.
All this contrasts with Africa, where there is a much more conservative outlook towards card based transactions.“ In North Africa transactions, do move but at the end of the day cash is the biggest thing that works. I would not use a card if not required and still prefer to use cash. Usage of cards is not a preferred mode of payment while cash is. The market is very developed, but as Africa people love to be more conservative and they use money than using card. It is the trust that makes a difference here,” elaborates Sangal.
Habib Alouah from Business Rules Solutions-OMA Emirates Group adds, the demand driver for transactions in
North Africa is cash withdrawal from ATM branches. Issuance and usage of debit cards exceeds credit cards and prepaid and mobile payments are highly requested. This is quite different from Middle East market requirements.
Beyond Morocco With the Business Rules Solutions partnership established, will Sangal now take OMA Emirates into Rest of Africa? The answer is not so straight forward.
“ For us it can be done by a mass run in all countries. I mean, to have 100 channel partners will take me three months to build as many channel partners as I want. But what is the end result? I would sell a product but never be able to maintain it.” That is an outcome Sangal wants to avoid. OMA Emirates expansion into Rest of Africa is based on replicating the successful Business Rules Solutions role model established in North Africa. For Sangal, it is imperative that localised product quality, skills, services, are extended further along with their expansion into Africa. Leveraging a pure play channel partner model is not the way OMA Emirates wants to expand into Africa.
However, OMA Emirates does also work with value added resellers in Central and South Africa under certain conditions. Depending on the competency of the value-added reseller, either it is a direct sell by OMA Emirates with a margin for the partner or tripartite agreement with local support by the reseller. In either case OMA Emirates takes a lead role in the engagement till the end.
“ We always sign a third-party agreement with us directly in case the partner does back out. Picking the right guy is very important so we work in understanding what those companies do. We do not just work with any partner that wants to resell our product, because it is more on the payment industry side.”
A significant variation of the vendor channel-partner commodity model practiced by so many, but more than likely to ensure steady expansion of OMA Emirates into the African continent. www. intelligentcio. com INTELLIGENTCIO
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