The Banking Executive Magazine - August 2021

Saudi Arabia the BANKING EXECUTIVE 38 ISSUE 152 AUGUST 2021 SAUDI ARABIA IS ‘LARGEST GROWTH OPPORTUNITY’ FOR NETWORK INTERNATIONAL Saudi Arabia presents the “largest growth opportunity” for Network In- ternational, its chief executive officer said, as the Middle East-focused pay- ment company goes ahead with its Riyadh headquarters plan in 2022. “KSA represents the largest growth opportunity for our business, it is the largest economy in the region, it has the highest personal consumption exposure and with a large and grow- ing population, it’s a very attractive market,” CEO Nandan Mer said. “We think that our expertise and ability with sophisticated financial institutions/merchants. We are well positioned to serve the KSA market,” he added. The set up for the expansion into KSA is $10m in capital and this, Mer said, would help to deploy state of the art technology with all the neces- sary adaptations. The company, which provides pay- ments systems for buyers/sellers in the fintech and financial institutions, will enable sellers to accept pay- ments and Mer said its corporate pur- pose is “to help financial institutions with business and empower individ- uals”. The company currently has $2 bil- lion in annual volume of sales with 18 million credentials under man- agement, which Mer said the com- pany was seeking to expand. Mer dismissed the idea that the move was prompted by the Saudi govern- ment’s introduction of a law, which comes into effect in 2024, that re- stricts international companies from contracting with institutions, agen- cies and funds owned by the Saudi government unless they have a re- gional headquarters in the kingdom. “It is business needs that are driving the move. We (1600 employees) have an on the ground presence in all our major markets and we had al- ways planned on having a large team in KSA because the market opportu- nities there and the size of the busi- ness. This is irrespective of the government’s new law in 2024 that we were going to be based here.” “We already have three customers in KSA and we are making a massive in- vestment in deploying technology on the cloud. We want to enable busi- ness to business payments, consumer services, transactions for merchants and in the near future also serving merchants directly.” The company’s debut listing on the London Stock Exchange in 2019 was described by Mer as having been the springboard for much of the com- pany’s growth and expansion in the two years since then. “We are delighted with the way it has gone. We attracted a good team, and we are fortunate to have a top board of directors who are very ex- perienced and we have had great guidance from them. It has helped us attract capital, the acquisition of DPO was a sizeable investment and the IPO was part of the reason we could do this”. He added: “The access to capital markets has also been important for us and we have a great roster of shareholders who understand the business. We are learning from inter- acting with them. Publicly listing has helped to attract business talent in the market”. While the world was reeling from the tragedy of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 Mer said the crisis had been a boon for business. “E-commerce spend is up by 90 per- cent. From a payments industry per- spective there has been a shift from cash to electronic payments, as well as remote purchasing behavior and we benefited from that and invested early on in this with seeking new technology to enable that shift.” He added that online spending in 2021 was up 42 percent from 2020 and up 94 percent from 2019. “However, some parts of the business have seen a slowdown in areas that are dependent on international travel and tourism but this also presents an incredible opportunity so we are ex- cited by tailwinds on international travel and tourism.” Mr. Nandan Mer, CEO, Network International