FEATURE
As a payment solution provider, OMA Emirates covers the full scope of issuance, acquiring, and retail POS solutions. Its card issuance and management solutions are leveraged for debit and credit cards, consumer loyalty cards, and other requirements for services based industries. Within Africa its portfolio of customer names includes Al Barid Bank, CAM Bank, Ministry of Habous, Stareo, Transdev. As a payment services provider entrant into Africa, it is important for OMA Emirates to evaluate its initial point of entry, roll out milestones, partnership strategy and sales model taking into consideration the realities of the African continent.
On the Middle East side, OMA Emirates started the acquiring business in 2006 and along with its software capability in issuance is now a service provider for telecommunication companies. It is currently a supplier for e-vouchers for mobile top-ups and utility payments.“ First we were selling software. Then we started with services. And then we created an ecosystem and combined both of them, explains Niranj Sangal, Group CEO, OMA Emirates Group.“ That is how we started the whole business.”
Progressing through the end to end solution and services ecosystem of issuance and acquiring as well retail POS, brought up some significant opportunities for OMA Emirates to reposition itself both in Africa and Middle East.“ We found that there is huge disconnect between all three platforms when it comes to creating an end to end ecosystem.” As an example, he points out across the Middle East region, almost all banks inside a country typically issue debit and credit cards, amongst others and hence are termed as issuing banks. However, a much smaller number of these banks invest in acquiring the payment cycle of spending, and those that do are called the acquiring banks. Inside UAE there are only four banks playing the role of acceptance, and all other UAE issuing banks depend on these four to complete the payment cycle.“ This is the standard case worldwide. I mean everybody does not get into it.”
The decade plus experience of OMA Emirates in the end to end, payment
Phone is the carrier in Africa today. If I do a payment transaction, the line that carries it, is through the telecom services provider, says Niranj Sangal, Group CEO OMA Emirates Group.
services provider role, has also prompted it to look more closely at the under-utilised role of the retail POS terminal. In day to day life, the maximum frequency of visits by most consumers is to a retail outlet for purchases. This is in comparison to visits to an ATM kiosk, using a mobile device for e-commerce or a PC device for Internet and e-commerce. The POS terminal inside a retail outlet is mostly setup by acquiring banks for the purpose of collecting merchant transactions from an issuing bank’ s customers. But the POS terminal can also be reconfigured by payment service providers like OMA Emirates, for the acquiring bank to facilitate utility payments, as an example, amongst other payment options.
A consumer at a coffee shop or a provision store can therefore not only pay for their coffee or provisions at the time of check out, but also if prompted pay for their overdue utility payment, near to expire parking ticket, and other integrated services.
The African continent also has its nuances of how retail transactions are conducted. The high risks associated with cash and the lack of access to formal banking channels, has migrated consumer transactions to mobile based payments. Telecommunication service providers like Vodacom, Safaricom, have been instrumental in building the enabling platforms for mobile money transactions.“ Africa is more of a continent where we are talking of cashless on mobiles predominately. Cash is a very risky thing in Africa. I am not saying all the countries but most of the countries have cash as a problem to carry.” Access to ATM kiosks in Africa are also fewer and their
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