FEATURE
In North Africa transactions , do move but at the end of the day cash is the biggest thing that works
Why North Africa is important for OMA Emirates
With significant differences between the Middle East and African markets , OMA Emirates has chosen to build a stable partnership with Morocco based Business Rules Solutions .
By Arun Shankar
OMA Emirates is a vendor operating across Africa and Middle East that provides cost effective payment solutions for banking , retailers , telecom service providers , insurance , government , oil and gas companies . It also provides card issuance solutions typically leveraged for debit and credit cards , consumer loyalty cards , and other services based industries .
When OMA Emirates entered the regional Middle East market almost five years ago , after being initially focused on UAE , the objective was to provide a solution that was cost effective and technologically ahead of its competitors . Banks in the Middle East were expanding their services for consumers and required solutions that were cost effective to manage debit , credit and loyalty payment cards , as well as to consolidate payments made by these cards through customer driven channels . Another wish list from the target market was for these solutions to be made available in reasonable periods of time .
When entering this market , there was uncertainty for OMA Emirates whether the solutions being developed would be niche and therefore too small to be sustainable . At that time , such solutions were still on the drawing board for many of its competitors . Another requirement was that the solutions had to be EMV certified and compatible . OMA Emirates selected the Java platform , developed the solution and launched it and met with prompt acceptance by banks across the Middle East .
“ We can now produce a card , issue a card and can acquire a card . Today we are basically a spine of any bank who wants to get into the business of cards . We have launched all the products for different banks around the region . Our core competency has been issuance and acquiring at all points of time ,” reflects
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