NEOPAY leads UAE’s tourism resurgence with an early Alipay+ launch, streamlining payments for Asian travelers as tourist numbers surge.
After the pandemic downturn, the Middle Eastern tourism industry had a meteoric rise. Actually, compared to Q1’19, tourist arrivals increased by 15% in Q1’23, with 22% of visitors coming from Asian nations. Making the most of this, Mashreq’s payment affiliate NEOPAY launched Alipay+ cross-border solutions earlier than any other acquirer in the United Arab Emirates.
With 14.36 million tourists visiting the UAE in 2022 and 2023 predicted to surpass this number, numerous organizations are considering streamlining the payment procedure for visitors. Through its partnership with Alipay+, NEOPAY is enabling Asian travelers to select their preferred payment methods at participating businesses. The first 2,000 retail locations in the UAE will have this available, and all merchants who currently have POS devices will have them upgraded to Alipay+ from the backend.
This is just the start. Throughout the year, NEOPAY intends to make the solutions available to all retailers. As it reaches over 1.4 billion global users through more than 20 mobile wallets and banking apps, Alipay+ has become the ideal partner for the paytech industry. This comprises:
- In the Chinese mainland, Alipay
- MPay in China’s Macao Special Administrative Region
- In Thailand, TrueMoney
- In the Philippines, GCash
- Pay with Kakao in South Korea
- Italy’s Tinaba
The partnership enhances NEOPAY’s offerings. The goal is to include platforms for consumer payment, issuing processing, and merchant acquisition. Since small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) are the foundation of many economies worldwide, NEOPAY provides its clients with services like SAAS based on Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) along with payment capabilities.
With this partnership, NEOPAY hopes to replicate the 26% increase that Mashreq, the firm that owns NEOPAY, has seen in comparison to prior years.
Advantages of cooperation
“NEOPAY has consistently led the digital payments revolution with its technological acumen powered by Mashreq,” said Vibhor Mundhada, CEO of NEOPAY. Our strategic alliance with Alipay+ contributes to this upward trend. Moreover, it facilitates the smooth integration of numerous Asian wallets by our merchants, which expedites the payment procedure.
“This collaboration not only demonstrates Mashreq and NEOPAY’s unwavering commitment to a digital economy, but it also solidifies our standing as one of the pioneers of this revolutionary payment method. We are growing and reaching a wider audience in the rapidly developing mobile payment ecosystem thanks to our cooperation with Alipay+.
“This partnership enables merchants in the region to not only accept Alipay, but also process various digital payment methods – through simple integration – to make visitors across Asia and beyond more welcoming,” stated Guoming Cheng, general manager of Ant Group in Europe and the Middle East. We’re excited to change the retail scene together. Additionally, merchants will be able to take advantage of new expansion prospects and customers will have a seamless experience.
