Saudi Arabia presents the “largest growth opportunity” for Network International, its chief executive officer said, as the Middle East-focused payment company goes ahead with its Riyadh headquarters plan in 2022.
“KSA represents the largest growth opportunity for our business, it’s the largest economy in the region, has the highest personal consumption exposure and with a large and growing population, so it’s a very attractive market,” CEO Nandan Mer told Arab News.
“We think that our expertise and ability with sophisticated financial institutions/merchants. We are well positioned to serve the KSA market,” he added.
The set up for the expansion into KSA is $10m in capital and this, Mer said, would help to deploy state of the art technology with all the necessary adaptations.
The company, which provides payments systems for buyers/sellers in the fintech and financial institutions, will enable sellers to accept payments and Mer said its corporate purpose is “to help financial institutions with business and empower individuals.”
In terms of total processed volume, value of payments processed, interim figures for the first six months of 2021 stand at $19 billion and the company hosted a total of 16.3 million cards, which Mer said the company was seeking to expand.
Mer dismissed the idea that the move was prompted by the Saudi government’s introduction of a law, which comes into effect in 2024, that restricts international companies from contracting with institutions, agencies and funds owned by the Saudi government unless they have a regional headquarters in the kingdom.
“It is business needs that are driving the move. We have (1600 employees) have an on the ground presence in all our major markets and we had always planned on having a large team in KSA. The market opportunities there and the size of the business. This is irrespective of the government’s new law in 2024, we were going to be based here.”
“We already have three customers in KSA and we are making a massive investment in deploying technology on the cloud. [We want to] enable business to business payments, consumer services, transactions for merchants and in the near future also serving merchants directly.”
The company’s debut listing on the London Stock Exchange in 2019 was described by Mer as having been the springboard for much of the company’s growth and expansion in the two years since.
“We are delighted with the way it has gone. We attracted a good team, and we're fortunate to have a top board of directors who are very experienced and we’ve had great guidance from them. It has helped us attract capital, the acquisition of DPO was a sizeable investment and the IPO was part of the reason we could do this”
He added: “The access to capital markets has also been important for us and we have a great roster of shareholders who understand the business. We are learning from interacting with them. Publicly listing has helped to attract business talent in the market.”
While the world was reeling from the tragedy of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 Mer said the crisis had been a boon for business.
“E-commerce spend is up by 90 percent. From a payments industry perspective there’s been a shift from cash to electronic payments, as well as remote purchasing behavior and we benefited from that and invested early on in this with seeking new technology to enable that shift.”
He added online spend in 2021 was up 42 percent from 2020 and up 94 percent from 2019.
“However, some parts of the business have seen a slowdown, areas that are dependent on international travel and tourism but this also presents an incredible opportunity so we are excited by tailwinds on international travel and tourism.”
*Revised figures for total processed volume and number of cards hosted to 2021 figures following company's request.
