Geidea, a leading fintech company in the GCC region, has teamed up with Magnati, a payments solutions provider, to enable merchants to provide seamless customer experiences through Magnati MetaV – the first metaverse marketplace in the Mena region.
Magnati MetaV is a virtual platform where customers can get a visual and sensory experience as they shop, learn, play games, attend events online from the comfort of their homes.
In this joint venture, Geidea and Magnati strive to be in sync with retail innovations by providing merchants with tailored data and insights such as the visual representation of products and services, real-time customer experiences, opportunities for ramping up revenue for brick-and-mortar industries and experiential commerce, tied to existing payment gateway.
General manager of Geidea in the GCC, Sailesh Malhotra, said: “At Geidea, we remain committed to empowering merchants to grow and scale their businesses.
“Through this exciting partnership with Magnati, we are tapping into a rapidly expanding, brand-new world of e-commerce. We are providing merchants with a fully-immersive experience – a ground-breaking and digitally-enhanced offering to help elevate the overall retail experience in the Magnati MetaV universe.”
Thanks to this partnership, merchants are benefiting from Magnati’s tailored payment solutions, which allow them to accept various digital payments through a secure and seamless API-integrated platform.
Using customisable avatars in an online environment, customers can browse and interact with retail items in three dimensions. Retail categories available for collection, trying on and buying include fashion, food, gaming and technology.
Managing director of institutional payments at Magnati, Salim Awan, said: “Magnati is proud to collaborate with Geidea to offer merchants in the region a more immersive way to reach their customers. Through Magnati-MetaV, customers can clearly visualise, feel and know what they are paying for, and merchants can unlock opportunities for revenue generation.”
The platform is fully integrated with traditional payment rails and gateways, enabling shoppers to pay for products and services on Magnati MetaV via cards, digital wallets and other accepted payment methods.
Magnati launched the platform in July to shift behavioural patterns from “electronic commerce” to “experiential commerce”, with a new virtual world that provides users with richer visual and sensory information, as well as improved quality of information.
Founded in 2008 in Saudi Arabia, Geidea has been expanding rapidly so far across the region with operations present in the UAE and Egypt. The company eyes to foray into seven more countries within the next two years to empower financial institutions and SMEs.
Earlier this year, Geidea became the payment service provider for Magnati as part of the company’s expansion in the UAE, paving the way to expediting digital payment acceptance.
Geidea, supporting more than 700,000 terminals within Saudi Arabia with a 75 per cent market share, has become the first non-bank entity in the kingdom to obtain an acquiring license from the Saudi Central Bank ‘SAMA’ to provide financial services directly to merchants and SMEs.
The biggest fintech company in Saudi Arabia, it is also ranked one of the top 25 fintech companies in the Middle East by Forbes.
