Tap Payments onboards 30,000 new merchants in Bahrain

Bahrain is home to the region’s oldest and most established banking and financial services sector

Tap Payments, a GCC-based fintech company, has reported onboarding around 30,000 new merchants across the region over the past year.

The company connects businesses around the world to the MENA region through its payment infrastructure by facilitating connection to the local payment networks in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt.

In 2020, Tap Payments set up operations in Bahrain to take advantage of its advanced financial services sector, best value operating model and progressive legislations.

Bahrain is home to the region’s oldest and most established banking and financial services sector, with over 350 financial institutions.

The sector, which accounts for 17.3 per cent of non-oil GDP in the kingdom, benefits from a stable, predictable, and forward looking regulatory and business environment.

Financial services continue to be a key contributor to Bahrain’s economy and will play a critical role in the Kingdom’s economic recovery plan which was announced in October 2021.

There are currently five GCC country specific local payment networks and another two in Egypt, in addition to the internationally known payments networks.

This means that it is an expensive process for e-commerce companies to expand their offering regionally.

Tap Payments provides the ease of doing business in the region without the hassle of setting up offices, licenses, and bank accounts in each country due to its multidimensional approach.

The company unifies the commercial and technical aspects of each local payment network so that businesses may instantly accept payments from across the region.

Its solutions include a payment gateway that accepts payments online and on mobile, as well as peer-to-peer payment request solutions so businesses can send payment links to customers.

Dalal Buhejji, executive director for investment origination at the Economic Development Board (EDB), said: “We are delighted to see Tap Payments’ rapid growth in Bahrain, benefiting from our strong, agile and pioneering financial services ecosystem.

By working with companies like Tap Payments, we continue to encourage growth in e-commerce, a sector that is expected to reach $50bn across the GCC by 2025.

The young, tech-savvy population we have here will supply Tap Payments’ new hub with all the local talent it needs.

In fact, over 65pc of the financial services workforce in the kingdom are Bahrainis.”

The GCC’s booming e-commerce market is currently worth an estimated $29bn.

Source: Zawya.