• Home
• /
• Finance

Touch and pay by Mashreq shortly

Starting from most probably this month, you don’t need to carry your wallet plastic cards for making payments at fast foods outlets, pharmacies, and even laundry as Mashreq is planning to launch a new product that will allow its customers to make payments using their mobile phones without signing a piece of paper, Mashreq head of retail banking Farhad Irani exclusively toldKhaleej Times ahead of the expected launch any time this month.

The new service will facilitate customers to make payments of up to Dh100 without the need to carry their wallets for small transactions, he said.

“We are going to launch proximity payment — touch and go. So the whole bunch of merchants, including fast food, pharmacies, laundry, etc, you don’t have to take out your plastic for up to Dh100,” Irani said. “No card and no signature are required. It’s [the transaction] only up to Dh100 because of the risk,” he explained. These are small conveniences that make customers kind of “wow”, he added.

Since the start of the year, Mashreq has launched some new innovative products and the bank will continue to focus on these products to provide more convenience to its customers, he said.

The technology called near field communication, or NFC, has made it possible to make payments by just tapping a mobile phone on a machine.

The country’s smartphone ownership is strong with more than 14 million subscribers at a 73 per cent penetration. Findings of a recent survey revealed that UAE consumers are keen to replace cash with mobile phones.

Around nine out of 10 Dubai residents showed their willingness to use their handsets as a mobile wallet to pay for goods and services, according to the survey commissioned by Netherlands-based digital security company Gemalto.

Payment behaviour is changing in the region, which was used to deal with cash for more than 75 per cent of transactions, and is now ready to switch to alternatives.

—abdulbasit@khaleejtimes.com