barq, a leading digital wallet for consumers and businesses in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and Thunes, a global money movement innovator, today announce the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to expand international money transfer opportunities for barq’s users.
In the partnership, Thunes will provide its Pay and Accept cross-border payment solutions to barq, enabling its customers to send money in real-time to over 4 billion bank accounts and 3 billion mobile wallets in 130+ countries, while monitoring fund movement at all times. barq will also be able to collect funds quickly and affordably from hundreds of payment methods globally, without the need for intermediaries or additional integrations.
Saudi Arabia’s need for cross-border payments has grown in recent years, fuelled by increasing numbers of expatriates and workers from southeast Asia, Europe and Africa. This new service highlights the importance of inclusive and cost-effective international payments to support growth across the Kingdom.
This partnership comes as Saudi Arabia’s digital payments market scales rapidly, following the Kingdom’s target to increase cashless transactions to 70% by 2025 as part of its Vision 2030.
“We’re pleased to partner with Thunes to bolster barq’s network, enabling us to provide more critical services to businesses and consumers, and support the needs of the growing expatriate and migrant community across the Kingdom. We are excited to be part of the remarkable advancements in fintech within the Kingdom recently and look forward to seeing further growth across the sector in years to come.”
Thamer Alharbi, Director of International Partnerships at barq
“Our partnership with barq shows Thunes commitment to provide seamless cross border payment solutions to businesses in Saudi Arabia and beyond. Thunes keeps expanding in the Middle East region as demand for transparent and real-time payments gathers force.”
Ahmad Yaacoub, Country Head for Kingdom of Saudi Arabia at Thunes
