By : Ghada Halmey
Mastercard and MaxAB, one of Egypt’s fastest-growing business-to-business (B2B) marketplaces catering to Egypt’s wholesale food and grocery industry, partnered to advance digitization and financial inclusion in the country. The two partners signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) at the EDGE 2023 forum in Dubai.
The collaboration will equip MaxAB's network of 100,000 micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) with innovative digital payment solutions, which will enable businesses to accept contactless payments from end consumers. Leveraging the tech-savvy nature of MaxAB's merchants, Mastercard’s acceptance solutions will not only digitize end-to-end process, but will further expand the platform’s reach into a wider base of MSMEs while eliminating cash handling, limiting reconciliation problems, mitigating fraud, and empowering merchants to growing their business.
“Through our partnership with Mastercard, we will introduce innovative financial services to our merchants, allowing them to seamlessly automate and digitize their payment cycles. Mastercard’s solutions will help us reduce manual operational processes and achieve scale at a much faster pace,” said Belal El-Megharbel, CEO, MaxAB.
“In today's digital world, B2B marketplaces must fulfill varying needs along the value chain and focus on sustaining growth while providing the best-in-class experience for businesses and consumers alike. Our partnership with MaxAB will further drive contactless acceptance solutions across the network and enable businesses to further expand and grow,” said Gaurang Shah, EVP, Products & Engineering, Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa, Mastercard.
The agreement is the first in Egypt and aligns with Mastercard’s global strategy to bring 50 million MSMEs worldwide into the digital economy by 2025 and the recently reached milestone of providing 25 million women entrepreneurs with digital solutions that can help grow their businesses.
