Geidea, a Saudi-based digital banking technology provider, offers point-of-sale (POS) terminals and business management solutions to both financial institutions and small businesses. Besides serving over 150,000 merchants and providing more than 700,000 payment terminals, it holds about 75% market share in Saudi. Sailesh Malhotra, General Manager – GCC at Geidea shares the company’s expansion plans in the UAE.

How well did you persuade customers with your unique products at Seamless Middle East 2022?

At Seamless, we have been able to highlight Geidea at a very large scale and received an overwhelming response. We have well highlighted the value of Geidea to all our customers including merchants, banks, and other fintech companies.

Speak about the businesses that you have interacted with and the industry verticals Geidea would be focusing on in the upcoming years.

We want to focus on all Industry verticals – retail, F&B, utilities government and B2B business. We want to play a very large role in the supply chain management business as well. We see a large role of Geidea in converting cash to card and specifically in supply chain management business, We wish to replace that with a corporate purchasing card (card on file) and Geidea being the transaction acquirer.

How do you deal with the competition and what edge ahead Geidea has against its competitors?

We would not focus too much on the competition but values we deliver. Our value proposition is very strong and simple – make payments easier at a cheaper cost by bringing the best technology to both the smallest and largest merchant in the market.

What about Geidea’s collaborations with financial organizations, mainly banks in the region?

One of the notable bank partnership has been with the First Abu Dhabi Bank (FAB). It has a fintech spinoff by the name of Magnati and we have signed up with them as a PSP. We have a few more partnership conversations going on in the region in Kuwait, Qatar and Oman for similar arrangements across multiple products. We will announce these shortly.

Tell us about the expansion plans you have in the middle east region

We want to go pan MENA. However, the selection of countries will be based on regulatory and technology availability / requirement. As of now, our focus is on the established markets, i.e., Egypt, UAE, and Saudi Arabia – we are doing phenomenally well in Saudi.

Do you collect user data as part of the business? If so, where do you keep it and handle it?

We collect information and follow all the standard requirements of Central Banks in the country of operation. We are very rigid and maniacal about following regulatory requirements and ensuring all customer data is well protected. We have our own data centers are these are closely monitored by our team. We follow and ensure all payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCIDSS) are followed and we stay compliant.