BenefitPay backs small and home-based businesses

MANAMA: New payment technologies like BenefitPay are helping small, virtual and home-based businesses compete in today’s fintech-focused business environment, the chief executive of Bahrain’s national electronic wallet operator has said.

“We are pleased that more small and home-based businesses, such as Instagram businesses in Bahrain are also taking advantage of the easy BenefitPay application which adds digital-age sophistication without the need for added investment,”said Benefit chief executive Abdulwahid Janahi.

The BenefitPay mobile application allows the processing of payments using a secure payments app via debit cards, credit cards and bank accounts.

The official also said the national e-Wallet has seen rapid expansion of its merchant partnership network since it was launched in July last year.

“We are happy to witness a significant surge in the number of merchants signing up. We aim to support all merchants in the kingdom and are confident that we can achieve this objective. We look forward to continuously strengthening our merchant portfolio and thereby contributing to Bahrain’s growing economy.”

According to him, BenefitPay is the only ePayment system in the kingdom that includes more than 18 banks in the country.

BenefitPay supports all types of small and medium enterprises’ (SMEs) registered with the Industry, Commerce and Tourism Ministry and also includes small, virtual or home businesses listed with the Social Development Ministry.

Mr Janahi said merchants can register easily at no initial set-up cost with any of the acquiring banks listed on the BenefitPay website.

An email with the business log-in credentials and an activation tool for the merchant app will be forwarded by the bank giving access to the company to set up their virtual branches.

The BenefitPay Merchant App for receiving payments can be downloaded on tablets or smartphones via Google Play Store for Android and the Apple App Store for iOS.

Merchants that sign up will receive exclusive value-added services including free tablets and training, the ability to accept remote payments from multiple terminals and generate payment reports 24/7, in addition to instant notifications on the terminal when payments are processed, he added.

Updates designed to further enhance customer experience are continually being implemented to the BenefitPay e-Wallet.

The latest was the launch of instant peer-to-peer (P2P) money transfers using mobile phone numbers, said Mr Janahi.

Source: GDN Online.