UAE BaaS provider NymCard launches fully public APIs for MENA

By Edil Corneille

Abu Dhabi-based banking-as-a-service (BaaS) FinTech NymCard, has announced the launch of its new Open API platform for payment card processing and issuing.

The platform has been designed to remove friction from the MENA payments industry and is expected to streamline the process of issuing new card programs and payment solutions, allowing the region’s financial technology companies and banks to innovate, customise and launch new payment experiences for their users. With the move to ‘Banking-as-a-service’ (Baas), the platform will allow FinTech developers to effectively enable their solutions and launch products across the MENA region.

Said to be built from the ground up, the objective of NymCard is to simplify the complex world of payments by bridging the gap between old legacy systems and modern cloud-native API first platforms.

NymCard localised its business model to serve the MENA region and work with local and regional banks and regulators as partners to remove the friction for FinTechs looking to build new products and services, and easily integrate and launch full digital banking suites of products.

Founder and CEO of NymCard, Omar Onsi said on the launch, “The payments industry is very complex and highly regulated. FinTechs need modern infrastructure that would get them to focus on building their product proposition rather than deal with the payment rails infrastructure. It’s a cumbersome process trying to find a processor, and then the Issuing Bank (BIN Sponsor). Publishing these API’s as our ‘technology building blocks’ removes part of this friction and gets our clients to start building faster”

Unlike many APIs that are poorly documented, NymCard has focused on creating ‘The best APIs available’, and has built a user friendly developer portal dedicated to API resources. “ Developers can now use our core APIs to issue their first virtual card in under 20 minutes,” Omar added.

Moving forward, NymCard will focus on new capabilities by publishing a set of API’s every two weeks with the aim of enabling the needs of different business models. NymCard now supports the $200 billion digital payments industry within the region and enables the payment ecosystem to use its technology as a plug-and-play set-up and seamlessly build and launch card programs.