Vaanathi Mohanakrishnan

Business Head – MENA, M2P Solutions

The UAE has seen an exponential growth in the FinTech and Payment space, how do you see the space playing out over the next few years?

The region overall has been warming up well to FinTech’s in the recent past. The concept of FinTech’s offering differentiated products and solutions is not something new. To add to it, the effects of the pandemic has clearly accelerated efforts around digital uptake bringing to the mix an element of great timing. We also need to appreciate the key role being played by the regulatory bodies in developing the ecosystem.

So, I think it is all playing out very well. We are at a very exciting phase in this journey as we see the immense interest evinced by FinTech’s from across the globe.

Having said that this is still the tip of the proverbial iceberg; I believe this space will get frenzied with many more use cases getting commercialized.

Could you tell us a bit more about M2P and what solutions does it provide?

We enable the Fintech ecosystem and can be thought of as a Fintech of FinTech’s. We serve both the disruptor as well as the disrupted in a meaningful way. We are one of South Asia’s largest open API infrastructure platform with deep domain and functional expertise and have demonstrated ability to enable a plethora of financial solutions. Our biggest differentiator, however, is our speed of execution and efficient Time to Market. With our significant and long-standing exposure to large and complex markets, we are a partner of choice for enabling end-to-end financial solutions.

We like to solve for real life problems in the market that can make a difference to the cash being transacted in the economy.

Today, we process of 50 MN transactions monthly enabling a variety of use cases that enable cash displacement from financial inclusion to corporate lending. 15% of India’s NTC (net to credit) originates on our platform today and our customers range from FinTech’s to banks and large Telcos.

Could you elaborate on how a business could benefit by having M2P as their payments partner?

M2P enables the disruptor and empowers the disrupted - by adding a layer of finance for tech companies and a layer of tech for finance companies. Inspired by Legos, M2P breaks down banking into API based modules which offer partners to develop, iterate and launch commercial-scale solutions at unprecedented speed. We also provide end to end program and customer life cycle management as a part of our offerings enabling our partners to focus on their core strengths while we do all the heavy lifting to ensure the product and experience requirements are taken care of.

When it comes to fintechs not many providers are keen to customize solutions however M2P has the unique capability to allow customizations based on the requirement of the client to deliver completely customizable solutions at unprecedented speed. Our partners also rely on our functional expertise in addition to our tech capabilities to facilitate better customer experience and seamless payments.

To date, over 500 businesses across FinTech and Financial Institutions have leveraged the YAP platform. Our API products have been utilized by top tech companies such as OLA, Swiggy, Lulu Exchange, Al Fardan, Razorpay, Finin, etc. The modular mobile-first API platform is backed by leading Banks and allows companies to develop, test rapidly, iterate their own branded debit, credit, and prepaid accounts.

Could you tell us a bit about who your core clients in the UAE are

Our core clients in the UAE are Pyypl, Lulu Exchange, Al Fardan Exchange. We are working with large exchange houses, many FinTech’s in the payments space – issuing and acceptance, and a few large banks. We work on a variety of solutions and products. Most solutions are focused on the enablement of a journey from brick to click for established players in the market. The pandemic has also accelerated efforts in the digital enablement areas for conventional players who have been slowly moving away from traditional channels. On the financially less banked population, we are seeing a lot of interest being evinced by FinTech’s. Other work includes enablement of concepts like ‘buy now pay later’, open banking infrastructures and similar use cases.

What made M2P partner with Digital Stallions Forum UAE and how has been the experience?

There is a great merit in associating with a networking platform like Digital Stallions Forum UAE as it springboards our efforts to gain visibility and make inroads in a market like the UAE

The Forum gives us access to Digital Marketing heads and Chief Marketing officers which offers a perfect base to connect, engage and grow. We plan to leverage the forums connects & harvest those relationships

The other initiatives undertaken by the forum like the Awards give us a chance to showcase our bespoke solutions that have been implemented and the value add done to our clientele