Mastercard and Amazon Payments to partner across MEA

• Mastercard and Amazon Payment Services have signed a multi-year commercial partnership agreement.
• The pair will work to digitise payments across the Middle East and Africa regions.
• Countries where they plan to focus on include Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, South Africa, and the UAE.

The fintech and mobile payments space, particularly on the African continent, remain the most exciting given how much investment and development is taking place. Aiming to feature in the segment are Mastercard and Amazon Payment Services, with the pair announcing the signing of a multi-year commercial partnership agreement.

The agreement will focus in particular on digitising payments in the Middle East and Africa region, with countries where efforts will be directed including Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, South Africa, and the UAE.

As part of the collaboration, Amazon Payment Services will adopt Mastercard Gateway, which is a single touchpoint for payment processing, as its go-to payment solution in 40 markets across the region.

“The integration of the solution will enable merchants to offer fast, seamless, and secure transactions as well as convenient payment choices to customers,” Mastercard shared in a release with Hypertext.

The partnership is also said to benefit thousands of Amazon Payment Services merchants, including Amazon online stores for shoppers across the UAE and Egypt. No word of South Africa just yet, but seeing as how our own ecommerce site launched earlier this year, an expansion to our part of the continent may be on the cards.

“In addition, it will open new opportunities for building synergies with entities such as telcos and governments to enhance their checkout options, driving a faster and more secure transaction rate for their customers,” Mastercard continued.

Citing one of its own recent Insights reports to illustrate the rapid adoption of digital payment services in MEA, Mastercard noted that 95 percent of consumers in Middle East and Africa are considering using emerging payment methods, such as wearables, biometrics, digital wallets, QR codes, and contactless payments.

It adds that 61 percent of consumers would avoid businesses that do not accept electronic payments, while banks in the region that have migrated to digital channels have also seen the share of digital transactions increase from 70 percent to 90 percent over the course of roughly two years.

“We are proud to partner with Amazon Payment Services to scale payment acceptance and accelerate digitization of payments with innovation solutions,” enthused Amnah Ajmal, Executive Vice President, Market Development, EEMEA, Mastercard.

“We are delighted to strengthen our collaboration with Mastercard, to deliver on our common goal of shaping the future of online payments in the region. Implementing Mastercard Gateway will empower us to expand our reach as a PSP and reduce the burden of integration, since the advanced technology solution is connected to all major acquirers around the world,” added Peter George, MD of Amazon Payment Services, Middle East and North Africa,

Along with the aforementioned multi-year agreement, the two organisations have also signed an agreement to develop Secure Card on File, Click to Pay, and token authentication services, so there is certainly more to come from the pair in the coming years.

The post Mastercard and Amazon Payments to partner across MEA appeared first on Hypertext.