Not sure why this may have felt like a secret but heres a project Ive been working on for the past few months. Payments in the Middle East SUCK and har-dar-damn its about time things changed. My cofounder, Yazin, and I were tired of hearing stories like all my money is stuck in paypal or I dont want to spend $50,000 on a security deposit before accepting payments. We meet entrepreneurs every day who hold off dealing with payments because its just such a strain on their emotions (think about waiting at the SAAQ/DMV everyday for about a month) so they opt in to solutions like Cash on Delivery (yeah that still exists here..) or PayPal (knowing they dont support any local currency and dont payout to any bank in the region). I believe in entrepreneurs in the region and heres why: theyre darn creative. Every entrepreneur has their own clever way of accepting payments. Ive seen so many creative solutions like partnering with friends/relatives who live in the US to integrate Stripe, or creating a whole new company in the UK to avoid dealing with these problems. Its a huge problem in the UAE, in Bahrain, in Lebanon, in Jordan, Syria, Egypt, and all over the region, but things are changing. Were building White Payments and its our solution to this problem. Its super simple -- we only charge on transactions and were Middle East native. Were on a mission here (rocket thrusters are warming up) and its been a blast (sorry, pun). Lots of adversity faced and interesting conversations with incumbents and banks but were super close to launching in the UAE and in Bahrain. I felt the need to share because you may know some of these entrepreneurs. They may be your brothers, or sister, or cousins, or ya habibi your cousins-best friends-daughter in law. Its time entrepreneurs take over and heres how were helping.
Posted on: Thu, 04 Dec 2014 08:04:17 +0000