Payment Infrastructure Firm NymCard Acquires MENA-Focused BNPL Firm Spotii

Payments infrastructure provider NymCard has acquired buy now, pay later firm Spotii.

The purchase, announced Monday (June 12), lets Dubai-based NymCard offer its financial services clients a buy now, pay later (BNPL) tool customized for local markets in the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) region, the company said in a news release.

“Spotii significantly expands the range of BaaS products and services available to NymCard clients, greatly reducing barriers to launch new innovative products,” said Omar Onsi, NymCard’s founder and CEO.

“We are thrilled to offer a comprehensive BNPL solution that can be tailored to meet the requirements of banks, financial institutions, retailers, FinTech companies and most importantly, their end customers.

According to the release, the integrated platform will serve both the B2C and B2B markets while also offering features like eKYC (know your customer), machine learning-powered rules, a fully configurable loan management system, and AI-driven collections app.

The acquisition comes at a time a number of metrics surrounding BNPL remain healthy, despite macroeconomic pressures.

During the pandemic, joint research from PYMNTS and Sezzle in the report “The New Credit Model: Why Financially Worry-Free Consumers Still Want Alternatives to Traditional Credit” found that BNPL held broad appeal among several groups of consumers.

These included those who don’t feel financially pressured and “worry free” individuals who pointed to the value of paying over time and the ability to purchase without overspending.

More recent research — this time from PYMNTS and Elan in the report “Credit Card Use During Economic Turbulence” – found that as inflation has surged and debt becomes more expensive, a large number of consumers have increased spending on credit cards. All the same, 15% have decreased their spending via credit cards, leaving consumers to find other, alternative means of purchasing goods and services.

The earnings reports over the past few months from pure-play BNPL providers and those who have folded BNPL into their ecosystems indicate that the tailwinds for paying in installments remain intact.

“Among the most telling indicators of BNPL’s embrace are volumes, variously defined as gross sales volumes or merchant sales volumes,” PYMNTS wrote. “Across the board, those volumes are up, markedly so.”

PYMNTS has also noted an upswing in digital payments volume in Dubai and other Gulf states in the past two years, fueled by growing smartphone penetration, the proliferation of new FinTech solutions and an increasing shift from cash to digital payments.

“Online marketplaces are increasingly looking for payment service providers which provide a seamless payment infrastructure in addition to offering added value by increasing checkout conversion with a wider choice of affordable payment options like BNPL and installments,” Amazon Payment Services’ Mohamed Imtiyaz told PYMNTS last year.