Tarabut Gateway, MENA’s largest Open Banking platform, has today announced a partnership with Zain Bahrain to provide the region’s first use case of Open Banking payments within a telco app. This pioneering alignment is the first time a regional telecom provider has used Open Banking to power its payments.
Zain Bahrain, a telecommunications industry innovator across MENA has become the first telecommunication provider to embrace Open Banking payments. For Zain Bahrain, the benefits include the ability to accept bank-to-bank payments where funds get credited in real-time avoiding long settlement periods; robust security through strong customer authentication processes (no card numbers are saved, reducing the risk of fraud); reduced transactional fees or the risk of chargebacks for customer payments compared to card processing or payment gateways.
For Zain Bahrain’s customers, Open Banking payments provide increased convenience as there is no need to input debit card or credit card details. Customers also benefit from the payment journey remaining within the Zain Bahrain app, delivering a faster, easier, and enhanced experience.
Abdulla Almoayed, CEO and founder of Tarabut Gateway said, “Our partnership with Zain Bahrain provides telco users with a new, better way to pay. Open Banking allows a fast, easy, and secure method for payment and a seamless experience for customers. This collaboration ushers in a new era of partnership between Fintechs and telcos in the MENA region, setting groundbreaking and innovative industry standards. Through collaborations such as this, we aim to provide the most cost-effective payment rails for merchants in the region, at significantly reduced fees compared to traditional payment networks and more secure than card payments.”
Last month, Tarabut Gateway concluded a seed round of $13M, following a pre-series-A funding round of $12M in the past nine months.
