Visa’s new hub targets digital payments in Saudi, Bahrain

The Middle East has become the fastest-growing real-time payments market globally, with government investment and a young, tech-savvy population propelling digital payments. Visa (NASDAQ: V) is now targeting this region with a new regional hub to be based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

The new hub will serve Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Bahrain, the payments giant revealed in its announcement. It will be headed by Ali Bailoun, a 20-year payments veteran who has been with the company since 2012.

The new hub will enable the company to deliver “greater agility and client proximity,” commented Tareq Muhmood, the regional president for the Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa (CEMEA) region at Visa.

It’s the latest move by the San Francisco-based company targeting the Middle East. In October last year, it opened a new innovation center at the King Abdullah Financial District (KAFD) in Riyadh—its fifth globally. The center is intended to “bring the next generation of payment technology and will serve as a collaborative platform to co-create the future of digital commerce.”

While the new hub will serve the three countries, a majority of the company’s efforts will focus on Saudi Arabia, the largest economy in the Arab world. Under its Vision 2030, the Saudi government has set a target of 80% cashless transactions, and according to Bailoun, it’s almost there. The new hub will enable Visa to tailor its solutions to support this roadmap with merchant incentives, faster onboarding, and smoother checkouts for consumers.

According to the World Economic Forum (WEF), real-time payments in Saudi Arabia stood at $675 million in 2022, but are projected to surge past $2.6 billion by 2027.

Other global giants are taking note. In September, the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority (SAMA) announced the launch of Google Pay in the country. It also revealed it had struck a partnership with Ant International to launch its Alipay+ service next year.

Thunes, a global payments network connecting over 15 billion payment cards in 130 countries, also recently launched a real-time cross-border payments service for Saudi Arabia.

Overall, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) digital payments market is estimated to be worth $251 billion this year, and it’s projected to surge to $420 billion by the end of the decade.

Watch: Richard Baker on engineering a smarter financial world with blockchain

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