Tell us about yourself.
I am a British Pakistani and have been living in the UAE for over fifteen years. I moved to the UAE in 2009 from the UK where I worked as an accountant for nine years in London in various capacities. I introduced the first insurance comparison site to the Middle East when I moved to the UAE. However, the idea was ahead of its time and I had to get a full-time job.
How did you get into entrepreneurship? And what inspired you to found ‘Direct Debit System’?
When I moved to my salaried job, the biggest challenge for me was to pay my rent in four cheques and the school fees for my kids in three installments. It used to imbalance my budget. I was not used to this in the UK and found the UAE system perplexing. When the UAE Central Bank announced the introduction of Direct Debits in 2012, I was relieved that the archaic system of bulk cheques would disappear. However, it never happened.
So, I decided to do something about it. That was my main inspiration behind starting Direct Debit System in 2017. I moved to Ajman to save money and pay for engineers to develop a system which could work.
Many years later, we are the UAE’s first Paperless Direct Debit Marketplace licensed by the UAE Central Bank and now have more businesses under our belt than any other banks in the UAE for Direct Debits.
Tell us about your company, Direct Debit System
Direct Debit System is an API provider for all businesses in the UAE that want to enable Direct Debit as a payment method. For smaller merchants, we provide a simple-to-use merchant portal. Our aim is to digitize the whole process of setting up and signing Direct Debit contracts in under one minute. We are happy that we have achieved that. Payers sign Direct Debits using their UAE PASS credentials within seconds. The whole process is paper-free.
What is your mission as a company?
Our mission as a company is for no one in the UAE to have to lean on their credit cards like I used to when my cheques for school and rent would all go out in one month. Monthly payments for monthly salaries in the UAE is our main mission as a company. This helps monthly salaried people budget better and stay out of debt, as rent and school fees account for more than 50 percent of the average take-home pay.
How did you test the concept?
One of the many reasons why Direct Debit could not win over cheques was a concept called “Assignment of receivable”. What this means is your landlord most likely has a financing arrangement on the building/villa you are living in and the landlord is stipulated by the financing bank to deposit all income into an account held by them. On average, larger landlords have more than one bank as financiers, making it impossible for them to maintain multiple bank sponsorships for Direct Debit collection.
Today, we have one real estate client with more than seven banks, which means seven codes. Settlement happens directly by the Central Bank on our system, bypassing the banks. It’s a win-win scenario for all.
At what point did you have an ‘aha’ moment where you realized the business was going to be a huge success?
There isn’t one moment I could pinpoint to be an aha moment. When you start a company, you must have unwavering belief that it will succeed. Of course, adjustments were necessary however, there’s no denying that a monthly salaried person would need a trusted system for his outgoings monthly.
Besides, Direct Debit is the only decreed system of payments which makes it equivalent to cheques in the UAE courts. It was always meant to be a system that can cater for legally binding payments such as rent and school fees.
What are the current trends in the digital payments industry in the UAE?
I believe the introduction of Aani and Jaywan card by AL Etihad Payments is truly a game changer. It will accelerate the adoption of paperless payments and trigger more competition to give better rates to merchants.
How are you revolutionizing the payments industry in the UAE?
We are standardizing the API’s for Direct Debits. At the moment, nine major Integrations are ongoing with major accounting and CRM systems. We believe, using Direct Debit should be a plug and play for all merchants in the UAE.
What has been your biggest achievement since launching?
I think in the UAE, there are three to four candidates for super apps. We are today proud to have sponsored three of them. Some directly and others indirectly. Thus, ensuring whoever will achieve super app status will use our system to make Direct Debits available for their users.
And what has been your biggest challenge?
Our biggest challenge was to align with all the UAE Banks to accept paperless Direct Debit mandates. We started with a 100% failure rate, despite clear communication from the Central Bank. However, we formulated a strategy and created a war room-like situation with all the Banks written on our large whiteboards. We approached all of them, sometimes physically approaching their head offices. Three months later, we almost got 70% complying with UAE PASS signatures on DD mandates. Today this coverage is almost 95%.
What interesting projects are you currently working on?
For us, like any other Bank, the Aani and Instant Direct Debit Payments is where our entire focus is. Because we believe this is future. And being successful in bringing instant Direct Debits to our merchants will bring in huge efficiencies for all stakeholders.
How have you grown the business?
In the UAE, we have made alliances with large industry-specific players. I will give you two examples since I mentioned the two industries previously, Real Estate and Education. For Real Estate we have partnered with Keypers, which has introduced RNPL (Rent Now Pay Later), which means Tenants are guaranteed to pay rent in 12 installments. Whilst in the Education space, we are proud to partner with ZENDA, which is the app for Schools in UAE and one of the largest players in the UAE education market. Our system is seamlessly integrated with both making Direct Debit accessible to a wider audience.
What are your goals for the next 3-5 years?
We have acquired a regulated UK Bacs DIRECT DEBIT Bureau www.elseware.uk and are starting our operations in the UK. In the next 3-5 years we plan to expand closer to home in KSA, Pakistan, and a bit further away in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Australia. All of these countries have recently introduced instant Direct Debits and our technology can be easily replicated in these regions.
How can readers find out more about you?
Visit our website: https://www.directdebit.ae
