FEATURE
( Left to right ) Niranj Sangal , Group CEO of OMA Emirates Group ; and El Habib Alouah , Managing Director North Africa at Business Rules Solutions-OMA Emirates Group .
a platform and not restrict it to a telecom service provider . Telcos have becomes just one more channel .”
This digital disruption is giving African telecom service providers the choice of moving into the bigger payment solution space or of taking the role of enabling their consumers to make payments .
Amongst the listed OMA Emirates customer profiles are telecos , Etisalat , du , Nawras , Mobily , Sabafon , Batelco .
As a payment solutions vendor OMA Emirates often needs to work with other vendors to build integrated platforms . A key aspect of working with products and solutions from other vendors is to establish the price point and its technology robustness .
OMA Emirates will simulate the working conditions and stress test the product before classifying the vendor ’ s product along with its products . The other requirement is to match their end customer requirements and budget with the positioning of the vendor product to avoid a mismatch . “ We would not suggest to a smaller bank a higher end product . If they do not need a higher end product why suggest it to them ,” Sangal questions . At present OMA Emirates has multiple vendor alliances with Ingenico for POS
terminals , CIM for card personalisation machines , Cryptomathic for security solutions , Matica Technologies , Thales , Ergonomic Solutions , and NBS Technologies .
During engagement with an end customer , OMA Emirates gets asked typical qualification questions . Is the product security certified and what is the timeline for implementation ? However more importantly over the last two years is the recurring question of leased ownership and payment modes .
Depending on the business size of the end customer , OMA Emirates does offer a build , operate and transfer model of ownership . This favours smaller banking entities who do not need to present large capital funds upfront to invest in Card Management Systems , Switch , issuance , acquiring and card personalisation solutions , to get started . This has opened up the opportunity market for OMA Emirates and Sangal estimates that the incremental turnover is around five such exclusive projects annually .
On a higher maturity of services level , OMA Emirates has started providing the entire end to end solution as a managed service . He explains , “ Because we had the Switch , the issuance platform , and the acquiring platform , we said let us get into a model of managed services .” Along with its BOT offer for smaller banks and its managed services offering to help potential customers cope with faster go to market and growing technological complexity , OMA Emirates now sees significant expansion in its market opportunities .
Why Africa Having established itself in the Middle East , OMA Emirates has been expanding its activities in North Africa through its investment in Morocco based Business Rules Solutions . Business Rules Solutions has significant expertise in developing acquirer solutions including its suite of Easy ATM Monitoring and EasyReconcile . It has also previously developed a mosque management system called Emam that is used to manage 45,000 mosques in Morocco .
For Sangal , there were two ways to enter the North African market . One was the traditional way of reinventing the wheel and building the venture block by block . The other way was to identify and invest in a suitable technology company with a strong competence of products and good understanding of the payment world .
Sangal chose the second way and after test marketing a jointly built product decided to invest in Business Rules Solutions and jointly take it to the next
30 INTELLIGENTCIO www . intelligentcio . com