TerraPay, a Netherlands-based global fintech enterprise, offers cross-border payment services for mobile wallets and bank accounts. Bassem Awada, GM – MENA & VP Global at TerraPay speaks to The Integrator on its business-specific services at Seamless 2022, Dubai

We understand that you offer lots of B2B Payment Services. Can you explain that to me in a very comprehensive way?

Response: Today as we speak, whatever goes under payments requires a lot of regulations and at the same time a lot of diligence. The question is what kind of payments are we doing? What kind of money movement and where is this money moving from? These are some criteria that need to be added to the equation. TerraPay is licensed and regulated by 26 different licenses across the world. And we do answer to the regulator payments perspective.

We are an infrastructure that connects the dots between two parties- sending and receiving and we would like to consider ourselves as a payment highway so at any moment any entity would like to move money, we are the solution for that. We have rails that give them through the single API, the highway to several products, be it B2B transactions, person to person, business to consumer, etc. From a business perspective, TerraPay has capabilities to payout across 100 countries- in bank accounts and wallets through our partner network.

Tell me about the API integration you offer. Is it available with all the ERP solutions available in the market?

From a connectivity perspective, our technology is an in-house technology. We built it from scratch. We did not buy off the shelf. We have limitations for instance, in adjusting or being accommodative to requests. We build it from scratch and accordingly this gives us several attributes to the technology itself. As the technology is very adaptive, scalable, and extremely flexible, we are also available through ERPs by getting capabilities.

Speak about the Middle East prospects you have. What are the key integrations or partnerships you have made in the Middle East?

The Middle East is a magnet for any payment infrastructure and the UAE is extremely advanced and extremely eager to keep evolving with the transition that is happening not only at the level of the commercial side of things but as well as the regulation side. Our strategy is to make sure that our expansion moves across all our portfolios because the region is so fertile.

 

What about your partnerships with other payment parties in terms of cards or UPI service providers?

One of the main visions of our CEO is to provide financial inclusion through our technology. Build capabilities as affordable and agile as possible. Hence the operators themselves reflect this affordability to their customers and bring them to the legal and legitimate channels.

From a partnership perspective, today, we are in a strategic partnership with Visa and eventually, we’re going to be getting into a new partnership with Mastercard. Through this, we will be offering them capabilities to get connections between them for the product on their platform through our interoperable technology.

We have recently signed an agreement with Network International and launched a product called “request to pay,” which is the capability to enhance financial inclusion for mobile wallets across Africa. Imagine this product users of those mobile wallets can now pay through their mobile to a wallet outside of their own country.

Our partners can enjoy the capabilities of sending money regardless of how the money is sent. This helps everyone to become competitive in everything.