UAE’s Mashreq Bank invests $10m in ‘Buy Now Pay Later’ fintech Cashew

UAE’s Mashreq Bank invests $10m in ‘Buy Now Pay Later’ fintech Cashew

Dubai: The ‘Buy Now Pay Later’ consumer financing space gets a timely boost, with UAE’s Mashreq Bank investing $10 million in cashew, which provides shoppers options to pay off purchases in zero-interest monthly payments. This is the second biggest funding raised by a local/regional BNPL platform recently; another player in this space, Tabby, confirmed it had raised $54 million from Saudi venture capital firm STV and Sequoia Capital India in March. For Mashreq, this is third big exposure in the fast-emerging fintech space, and a senior official believes that cashew can be a good fit to the portfolio. “BNPL as a mode of payment is gaining traction globally, in the wider region, and the UAE in particular, where Mashreq aims to play a key role in this space,” said Fernando Morillo, Senior Executive Vice-President and Group Head of Retail Banking Group at Mashreq Bank. “We believe this offering will allow an alternate option to pay for the consumers and would increase the size of the pie. “We are looking at the partnership to offer more payment options to our merchant partners which would drive more business for them. We would also create longer tenure BNPL options, which would differentiate our