Mashreq Bank offers 'buy now pay later' options to customers

Mashreq Bank will now offer 'buy now pay later' options on purchases made through merchant partners. This comes after tie-up with BNLY platform cashew Payments.

This way, customers can shop for assorted merchandise by paying off in small monthly installments and not having to pay any interest on the balance. Mashreq is one of the top three merchant acquirers in the country, with volumes having surged by more than 35 per cent in the first three months of this year.

The bank also saw ecommerce volumes grow by more than 250 per cent in 2020. "Customers (are) increasingly look for affordable methods to pay for their purchases," said Kartik Taneja, Executive Vice-President and Head of Payments, Mashreq Bank. "Similarly, merchants will significantly benefit from the partnership due to an enhanced payment experience, thereby drawing more customers and increasing their sales.

As the use of contactless payments and digital wallets across the UAE steadily increases, we anticipate the uptake of BNPL services to follow suit."Meanwhile, the first blockchain-based trade finance deal in global steel industry has been struck and it involves a UAE-based business.

The transaction was done by UAE's Universal Tubes & Plastic Industries Ltd. and the Indian metals giant Tata Steel. It involved Universal Tubes importing its order of flat carbon steel to the UAE from Tata Steel's India base.

The transaction, with HSBC Bank overseeing it, confirms the "operational viability of blockchain as an alternative to exchanges of documentation".

It was done over the 'Contour' blockchain platform in which HSBC is a founding shareholder. "We are confident this will pave the way for widespread adoption by other clients, counterparties and industries, many of whom we are already in talks with," said Sunil Veetil, Regional Head of Global Trade & Receivables Finance at HSBC.

The platform allows all parties to have visibility of a trade with no single organisation having control of all the data. Apart from being the first such in the steel industry, this was the first "integrated paperless letter of credit and eDocs transaction for a steel export". And also the first end-to-end paperless trade combining electronic bills of lading and digitised letter of credit in the steel commodity business. conventional paper-based