Business & Money | Tuesday 3 November, 2015 1:04 pm |

PayPal has launched an Arabic version of its website and customer service to connect with a wider pool of e-commerce users across the Middle East & North Africa to the global marketplace, and to drive growth of its online payment services in the region. To date the company has built a following of 173 million active users globally, whilst positioning itself as the leading online payment solution provider in the region.

 

As Middle East & North Africa’s e-commerce and m- commerce sectors continue to thrive – with almost two thirds of UAE consumers having shopped online in the past 12 months* – the website now allows more than 400 million prospects in the Middle East to sign-up on PayPal in their own language empowering Arabic users to communicate with consumers and merchants in their native language, whilst benefiting from the reach of the global marketplace. 

“We see huge growth potential in the Middle East & North Africa region – where registration has jumped significantly in recent years, across the 12 countries in which we are currently present,” said Kivanc Onan, Regional Director, PayPal Middle East & North Africa & Turkey.

“E-commerce is booming in MENA, and the launch of the Arabic site is set to open up a world of opportunities to hundreds of millions of Arabic speakers eager to be connected with more products, services and consumers around the globe.” 

During the development stages of the Arabic website, the company turned to Arabic speaking PayPal enthusiasts for an official hackathon to develop, test and launch the platform successfully. 

Hisham Abdulhalim, Head of Quality for Arabic at PayPal, commented on the hackathon, “It’s incredible how many PayPal engineers felt a connection to the region and wanted to help bring a new language to PayPal. They worked extremely hard to develop new and fresh designs, implementing content right-to-left – in a traditional Arabic format – for the first time in most PayPal products”.

In the past 12 months, PayPal has demonstrated its commitment to providing faster, easier and safer payment solutions in Middle East & North Africa. In May 2015, PayPal merchant services were launched in Egypt – empowering merchants to sell to a global market of 169 million active PayPal customers.

Alongside on-going regional expansion, PayPal is in a period of transformation. In July 2015, PayPal started trading on NASDAQ as PYPL, as a new standalone public company.