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Paymentology And Wio Bank Hope To Transform UAE Banking
Paymentology’s card issuing and analytics will support Wio Bank’s next-generation services.
Paymentology, the world’s first truly global in-cloud card issuing platform, has joined forces with Wio Bank, the UAE’s first platform bank, in a bid to empower local businesses and consumers with modern digital banking solutions.
Wio Bank, launched in September 2022, is focused exclusively on digital and embedded banking services and applications and provides startups, freelancers, and small businesses with seamless access to banking solutions. The company’s Wio Business offering provides a simplified, fully digital business account service with supplementary tools that aid business management.
Wio Bank’s new partner, Paymentology, completes the digital banking puzzle by facilitating a wide range of card services, including Visa debit cards, plus Apple and Google Pay. The cloud-based card issuer also enables Wio developers to view a real-time data feed, providing detailed customer spending insights to help the bank tailor its solutions to the exact needs of local businesses.
UAE businesses have historically relied on brick-and-mortar branches to open accounts and make transactions. With their newly announced partnership, Wio and Paymentology are promising “fast, simplified and fully digital financial services” for small-to-medium businesses in the region.
Also Read: UAE Digital Technology Spending To Hit $20 Billion By 2026
“The UAE is at the forefront of innovation in digital financial services, making huge strides toward becoming a cashless society in the not-too-distant future. We’re incredibly proud of the role we are playing in supporting fintechs achieve their ambitions in the region with increasingly localized, customer-centric, and data-driven propositions,” says Rowan Brewer, CEO at Paymentology.
The latest announcement from Paymentology and Wio Bank comes as the UAE’s financial services sector undergoes a rapid transformation. Consumer demand for digital products and services is on the rise, with research by Visa revealing that 52% of Emirates consumers plan to go cashless by 2024, compared to 41% globally.
News
LUVED Is A New Curated Preloved Marketplace For The UAE
Sellers keep 100 percent of every sale and AI can build a listing in five seconds — though the app’s smartest tools are still coming.
Secondhand shopping has become mainstream in the UAE, but the experience is still scattered across resale sites, social media and informal group chats. LUVED, a mobile-first marketplace that launched in Dubai this month, is betting it can pull that activity into one place — and that the thing buyers and sellers actually want is not more inventory, but trust.
The app trades in what it calls circular luxury: preloved fashion and lifestyle pieces across men’s, women’s and children’s categories, bought, sold or given away peer to peer. Its main pitch is economics, with sellers keeping 100 percent of every sale under a zero-commission, fast payout model, while buyers are promised vetted pieces at lower prices.
Where LUVED is staking its reputation is verification. Sellers pass a KYC check, and items run through a two-layer authentication system powered by Entrupy that pairs instant AI screening with human expert review for high-value pieces. Authenticity certificates travel with each item, payments sit in escrow, and a buyer-protection package the company calls The Safety Net adds a 48-hour return window and dispute resolution. Door-to-door logistics removes the in-person meetups that make most resale deals awkward.
An in-app assistant called Luvbot — offering selling insights and demand-based recommendations — is soon to be introduced to the platform. Other features include autofill and dynamic pricing that lets users build a listing in as little as five seconds from three photos, plus a swipe-based feed, story-style drops and in-app chat in English and Arabic. Finally, a gifting layer, Luved & Gifted, lets users pass items to others inside the app rather than sell them.
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“After moving to Dubai, I saw how difficult it was to sell or even give things away,” says founder and CEO Shaima Sibtain. The friction is real, and so is the competition. In resale, trust is won transaction by transaction — and that is the test LUVED has set itself.
The app is live on the App Store now, with Google Play to follow. The company also plans to expand across the region, which will be the real test for a marketplace staking everything on trust.
