Areeba: Revolutionizing the traditional landscape of transactions in the Middle East

The last decade was seamlessly transforming especially in the technology department. There were numerous technological advancements in various industries around the world. These advancements such as the introduction of heavy AI, ML, and other advanced technology helped industries in growing at a rapid speed. Aftermath, there was the birth of new ideas, which gave chance to new companies introducing latest services/products/ solutions for the customers. Amongst such new-age companies, areeba has marked itself as a future-ready company offering the best fintech solutions to its customers.

Established in 2017 as a subsidiary under M1 Group, areeba is a modern financial technology company that creates smarter, faster, and seamless modes of payment for various clients such as banks, financial institutions, merchants, government helping them to grow along with them. The company focuses on embracing the latest fast-paced technological revolution and rapidly evolving trends, to ultimately offer our customers a unique range of innovative payment services and loyalty programs, locally and regionally.

Safe and Swift Array of Solutions

While focusing on operating through three segments: Merchant Acceptance, Card Issuance & Financial Technology. areeba confidently aims at its cutting-edge expertise, solid financial profile, and operational flexibility offering its cashless payment solutions to the Middle East & North Africa regions. Meanwhile, electronic and digital payments have spiked up with the increase in innovation and disruption in the payment and card industry. This has allowed the company to grow its resources and capabilities aiding in expanding the business independently. The company is highly focused on investing more in technology and innovation, especially in developing digital and mobile payments and expanding in more geographies.

areeba offers a wide array of solutions that cater to banks, financial institutions, government, and even individual merchants. It recently introduced Zaky—a digital wallet that is anticipated to be the backbone of the payment shift in the market. This innovative tool has the potential to tremendously enhance the way customers transact and pay. Especially in the crises such as the COVID-19 outbreak, tools like Zaky facilitate daily financial transactions while keeping the social distancing norms in check and enable consumers to access safe and quick payment services. “Zaky will also help digitize the cash economy in the region, by enabling anyone with a phone number to conduct payment transactions in a digital, seamless, and cost-effective way,” said Ramzi Saboury (CCO at areeba).

First Fin-tech Provider

areeba distinguishes itself as a people-first fintech provider. A platform that speaks the language of the client has a clear understanding of consumer behavior, and ways to alter behaviors seamlessly and efficiently. areeba is built on the strong pillars of innovation, trust, quality, expertise, and collaboration. Likewise, the strongest assets of the company depend on people and backgrounds from different sectors that have unified under one umbrella to deliver comprehensive diversified expertise.

The interview was conducted with the Chief Commercial Officer of areeba, Ramzi Saboury who brought along many expertise from former employers from the same line of business or somehow related. Ramzi has led Visa Inc operations for the Levant Region since 2012 from Beirut office, and prior to that, he held executive positions in Retail and Private Banking in Gulf and the United Kingdom. Moreover, he was also recognized as one of the most promising leaders in the banking industries for the Middle East and the Asia Pacific and received the award in Hanoi Vietnam from The Asian Bankers in 2008. Currently, he is responsible for the business and commercial strategy of the company as well as the expansion in different regions, specifically the GCC, and Africa, given the history of M1 Group in that continent in the telecom area.

“areeba’s vision is to empower a cashless world; and our mission and aim is to provide an efficient clearinghouse that processes secured transactions for financial institutions, governments, merchants, and individuals, locally and regionally,” affirmed Ramzi.

Changing the Traditional Norms

Ramzi has been effective in building a skilful team at areeba. This has helped him in successfully achieving the mission and vision of the company. However, he still is dubious about entirely fulfilling the mission and anticipates a bumpy road ahead—especially in the Lebanon region to change the traditional mindset.

Altering the traditional norms of transactions has always been a challenge for areeba. Among these challenges are the regional regulatory guidelines in the Middle East which need advancements and improvements. Ramzi anticipates that these new regulations will enhance the modern platform of transactions and consequently allow people to swiftly shift toward a cashless economy. “This is also essential for fraud prevention,” underlines Ramzi. For instance, the digital wallet and digital onboarding are services that need to be implemented and regulated in that sense. areeba’s team is actively working on this.

He adds: “It is not sustainable anymore that regulators continue the conventional way of approving and allowing digital transformations in a specific territory with specific rules and guidelines. It is time where all central banks and regulators must open up to discuss this matter between regions and continents to enable a smooth and uniform customer experience across countries.

Tackling the Pandemic

The sudden outbreak of COVID-19 has highlighted the importance of digital transactions. Presently, the fear of transmission has pushed the consumers and merchants to rethink the way they pay and transact. Interestingly, areeba was one of the first payment providers in the region to focus on contactless and e-commerce solutions to help to fight against COVID 19.

areeba is already proficient in offering seamless card processing and acceptance services, but with the outbreak of COVID-19, it played a vital role in upgrading the e-payment tech industry in the Middle East. It introduced a series of digital products such as the biometric card and QR code to POS mini and digital wallet. In order to make this shift tranquil, the team of areeba has worked diligently.

Diligent and Persistent Team

Since 2018, areeba has been implementing the agile methodology within the company, which has proven to help the teams in consistently deliver excellence in its products and services. This methodology was equally utilized amid the crisis and the team outperformed itself despite the challenges. The goal is to develop, deliver, and sustain complex products through collaboration, accountability, and iterative progress.

Remote working did not affect the momentum of the team. The agile methodology has significantly enhanced cross-departmental collaboration and broken down the team silos leading to efficient utilization of resources. It has allowed the teams to continuously improve their results with fast and effective time to market, all the while focusing on customers.

The continuous diligence and persistent vision has located areeba on the map of leading financial solution providers. Ramzi credits the two main factors that has distinguished areeba from the crowd,

Innovation: Crafting non-traditional payment solutions and key partnerships that aim at optimizing the user experience by creating seamless payment solutions. Technology and infrastructure: areeba offers a full suite of technology-enabled payments solutions through a well-invested, highly secure, and scalable infrastructure that is designed for customers of varying levels of size and complexity and across multiple channels.

Leading to Transparent Environment

Ramzi is affirmative that the tech advancements like AI will soon be integrated with the payment and financial services world. Acknowledging this trend, areeba will be focusing on AI to implement more services such as fraud detection chatbot, consumer behavior scoring, dynamic 3D secure, predictive analysis, etc.

“We understand that the younger generation has grown up with mobile technology at their fingertips and for many of them cash is an outdated concept,” said Ramzi. In an attempt to cater to this trend, areeba is preparing to launch a mobile payment app and provide the population with a convenient payment tool bundled with financial services and value-added benefits. Alongside, areeba is aiming to play a big role in the education of the different sectors especially the government to accept the change to the cashless world to fight corruption and move to a more transparent environment.

Quote: “We aim to provide smart, efficient, and secure payment products and processing capabilities to banks, merchants, governments, and individuals.”