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Dubai-based fintech startup Jingle Pay is bringing neobanking to the Middle East, starting with its home turf of the UAE.
The brainchild of Amir Fardghassemi, an ex-hedge fund manager and fintech startup founder, and Nadeem Hussein, founder of Telenor bank and EasyPaisa in Pakistan, Jingle Pay brings elements of social payments to mobile wallets backed by cash accounts for instantaneous payments and easy money transfers to friends and family.
“We’re seeing tremendous demand for a new way of offering banking services in the Middle East. Bricks and mortar banks don’t have the immediacy of response that a new generation of always-connected consumers wants,” says Fardghassemi. “Jingle Pay will be offering a multi-currency account and card, remittance, nano financing, instant and free money transfer services in addition to other value-added services. We are more than an alternative banking solution – we are the region’s first Super App Neo Bank.”
Jingle Pay has digitized the onboarding process and customer due diligence to cover 7600+ government IDs in 160 countries. Acceptable identification includes passports, residency permits, Emirates ID and UAE driver licenses.
Recent World Bank figures show that as many as 1.7 billion adults remain unbanked globally, without an account at a financial institution or through a mobile money provider. The report also states that in the Arab world stretching from Muscat to Casablanca, only 8 per cent of the adults belong to the banked population. Financial inclusion measurement in the Arab world resulted in a large unmet demand for financial services with 168 million people lacking access to a basic bank account.
Says Fardghassemi: “We’re seeing mobile phones and fintech come to the fore in key global markets that haven’t been ideally served by traditional markets. We’re looking to deliver financial inclusion in new ways to global audiences, starting with the Middle East. Here, we’re not just talking about the completely unbanked but also low-income individuals who can’t avail themselves of financial services in any meaningful way.”
Jingle Pay is currently in the process of getting licensed in the UAE, Indonesia, Philippines and other GCC markets. It is expected to move to full-fledged operations in the UAE in the latter half of 2020.
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