MENA FinTech firms PayTabs and Invoice Bazaar collaborate to empower small businesses
PayTabs, MENA’s award-winning payment solutions provider, today announced a strategic partnership with Dubai based Invoice Bazaar, a forfaiting and working capital solutions provider. The objective of the collaboration between the two firms is to support small and medium e-commerce businesses (SMEs) with working capital requirements via Invoice Bazaar’s banking partner network. The main aim of the partnership is to provide support to small businesses to withstand the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. 
SMEs are key players in the global landscape, especially in emerging economies. On a global scale, SMEs represent 90% of businesses and more than 50% of employment according to the World Bank. According to the UAE Ministry of Economy, SMEs represent over 98% of the total number of companies operating in the country and contribute 52% of the GDP from non-oil sectors.
Under this landscape, PayTabs would continue to facilitate payment processing in 168 currencies for e-commerce SME businesses by offering them payment gateway solutions while Invoice Bazaar would enable the e-commerce SME businesses in the UAE to leverage on their banking partner network and obtain working capital solutions. As part of the collaboration, more SME businesses will be able to take their stores digital and accept mobile and online payments seamlessly and securely via PayTabs B2B solutions. SME’s that have benefited from Invoice Bazaar’s working capital and forfaiting solutions will now also be able to benefit PayTabs cutting edge features such as simplified electronic invoicing and have access to a complimentary business manager dashboard to help manage their transaction data, customer billings, and history.
Commenting on the launch, CEO and Founder of PayTabs, Abdulaziz Al Jouf said, “We found Invoice Bazaar to be a great partner as they understand the clientele, segment, and product since they operate under a similar ecosystem. Our partnership enables more e-commerce sellers to streamline their payments and invoicing so they can focus on digitizing and scaling up their businesses to meet the pressing demand for online shopping at this time”.
Invoice Bazaar has worked on completely digitizing and automating this offering to PayTabs’ customers so that they are able to introduce their SME clients to avail electronic credit approvals from their financial services partners. In the current scenario where most businesses are working remotely, this feature helps small businesses to avail much needed working capital digitally. As the clientele targeted are online SMEs, they would undoubtedly appreciate and benefit from the services provided.
“Working with a payment services partner like PayTabs helps us penetrate through segments better. A robust technology platform enables scalable segmented execution. Deep understanding of customer segment enables us to provide customized working capital and forfaiting solutions. We hope we are able to help SMEs in the current situation to survive the impact of the global pandemic” said Anand Nagaraj, Founder & CEO of Invoice Bazaar.
The Lebanese startup ecosystem saw an increase of 18% in startup deals between 2018 and 2019, with 45 deals taking place. While the number of investments has gone up, the majority of these involve Early-Stage companies. Discover more details in our 2019 Lebanon Venture Investment Report.