From the fairly straightforward PinPay to Yellow Pay, a bitcoin-based online payment system, online payment apps or services are springing up all over the region.
And now it seems that one UAE-based entrepreneur will share his online payment application, The Bridg, at the esteemed The Next Web conference in Amsterdam in a few weeks. His company was the only Middle Eastern startup to be represented at The Next Web.
Having initially conceived of Bridg as a savings application, Palestinian Moussa Beidas, 30, who was born and raised in the UAE, refused to disclose too much about his app before its big appearance on April 23.
Targeting emerging markets, Beidas believes that his secure payment application will appeal to people who live in countries where access to smartphones is greater than access to banks.
“No one was addressing this. Other payment methods may work great for North America or Europe but not for developing countries and the masses with no cards, data plans or card machines,” he said to The National last month.
In addition to the boom of ecommerce in the Middle East, many believe that interest in online payment in the region is thanks to the fact that credit cards and payments between countries can be very difficult. Secure online payment is seen by many as the next step, where economies will jump from being very cash-based to online, in some ways skipping the credit and banking system.
While he is coy on the specifics, Beidas says that Bridg will work well with gas stations and home-delivery services.