ZoodPay, a digital lending platform for e-commerce in the Middle East and Central Asia, has partnered up with Mastercard to launch a first-of-its-kind prepaid virtual installment card in the Eastern Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EEMEA) region.
The introduction of the virtual installment card will allow ZoodPay to scale its offerings and provide Buy-Now-Pay-Later (BNPL) solutions to merchants anytime and anywhere without being restricted exclusively to the ZoodPay network.
In addition, Mastercard’s network of merchants will gain access to Zoodpay’s SMEs ecosystem facilitating end-to-end digitisation.
The companies said in a statement that the ecosystem would span product onboarding, fulfillment, last-mile delivery, and distribution channels, including ZoodPay’s own marketplace as well as other online platforms.
Mastercard will supplement this by providing payment methods, and technical infrastructure for enablement and scalability.
Speaking on the announcement, Michael Khoi, CEO of ZoodPay said, “Our partnership with Mastercard will go a long way in shaping the future of digital payments across emerging markets. We are looking forward to the launch of a holistic suite of fintech services for consumers, merchants, micro and small and medium enterprises, helping the unbanked population access the financial ecosystem.”
With the partnership aiming to expand financial and digital inclusion, particularly for the underbanked population and those with no credit data or limited access to finance, it is expected to serve up to 300 million people by providing BNPL options for consumers and loans for SMEs.
This includes up to five million SMEs and 4,000 merchants, the companies said.
According to Juniper Research, BNPL services will account for more than 24% of global e-commerce transactions for physical goods by value by 2026, up from 9% in 2021. The number of global installment users will more than quadruple to 1.5 billion in 2026 from 340 million in 2021.
