GCC payments industry set to leapfrog other economies in 2021

GCC payments industry set to leapfrog other economies in 2021

Payments made via Bahrain's BenefitPay set to exceed US$4billion this year49 per cent increase in online shopping for UAE consumers reported earlier this year37 per cent of financial transactions in KSA are now digital, according to SAMAManama: After a year of increased digitalisation and major shifts in the FinTech landscape, the GCC payments industry is set to leapfrog other major economies in 2021.The region has traditionally relied heavily on cash but is now looking to overtake the adoption of digital payments in other parts of the world. As the foundations for digitalisation of payments are still developing across the GCC and wider Arab world, COVID-19 has had a catalysing impact on the adoption of FinTech – particularly in the payments space.“While no-one could have predicted a pandemic, the Gulf has been well prepared. In Bahrain we laid the groundwork for coping with this shift in consumer behaviour when we brought in a number of tech-friendly laws and regulations, introduced a commercial 5G network and brought AWS' first data centre in the GCC to the Kingdom.“Where previously the Gulf may have been typecast as late adopters of emerging technologies, statistics like these show we are not only closing the gap between