Much like the rest of the world, having encouraged residents to stay home over various parts of the coronavirus pandemic, contactless payments have come to the fore. Mastercard has doubled down on enabling contactless payment mechanisms across the region over the course of the pandemic, both in stores and online. This helped drive contactless payments, such as wallet payments, Apple Pay, Samsung Pay and, in Saudi Arabia specifically, mada Pay. In Saudi Arabia alone contactless transactions earlier in 2020 grew three times as fast as non-contactless over the same period last year. The coronavirus has placed a spotlight on contactless transactions, thanks to its emphasis on social distancing. “It’s discouraged people from touching cash, with all the potential hygiene risks that would come with it. Contactless transactions, e-commerce transactions and mobile money solutions are all the obvious winners from that perspective.
Mastercard recently partnered with Delivery Hero to establish a MENA-wide digitized payment chain for the global food delivery and ordering platform. In Mena up to 20 million consumers, 650,000 riders and 100,000 restaurants are positively impacted by the enablement of touchless security for transactions and, beyond, delivery solutions. It’s been great for the industry and definitely a much better experience for the consumer and merchant as well. Saudi Arabia has been seeing a start-up revolution. One of the means by which Start Path has been aiding young SMEs in the kingdom is the Fintech Express programme. It allows us to fast track a new player – who has very limited experience in the payments business – through the motions, because payments are a regulated business.