News

First Paperless Direct Debit Marketplace Launches In UAE

The UAE-based FinTech company, Direct Debit System, has launched an all-in-one platform called Direct Debit Marketplace to help users make recurring payments.

Published

4 years ago

September 12, 2022

Nour Nasir

first paperless direct debit marketplace launches in uae

Direct Debit System’s new platform will charge merchants a fixed fee for credit card & current account transactions, significantly reducing operating costs. The platform provides consumers and merchants with a simple all-in-one method for setting up and receiving recurring payments, such as school fees, rent, utility bills, and general subscription-based services, such as gym memberships.

One of the headline features of the service is that it will not affect merchant relationships with banking providers. In addition, the platform’s transactions are integrated with (and regulated by) the UAE Central Bank.

“We are delighted to see the launch of Direct Debit, another success story from our Innovation Accelerator program, where we nurture promising startups that innovate and use technology to disrupt industries. Direct Debit is a perfect example, providing merchants and payers in the UAE with a marketplace where they can transact recurring payments efficiently at low cost,” says Fatima Al Naqbi, Chief Innovation Officer, Ministry of Finance and MBRIF representative.

Writing cheques for rent or school fees is still common in the UAE, so Direct Debit Marketplace hopes its app will provide a safer, more convenient, and centralized alternative. UAE-based merchants using the platform can easily integrate with their accounting software or use the built-in dashboard. Direct Debit Marketplace is integrated with UAEPASS, the UAE’s secure digital identity scheme, which makes the entire process paperless.

Also Read: Virtuzone Partners With Binance For Crypto Payments

“Data security is very important for us, and the system is hosted in Dubai’s Data Center, known as Dubai Pulse. This makes us DESC (Dubai Electronic Security Center) compliant, with data positioned safely behind government firewalls and systems, which are the best in the world. Direct Debit Marketplace is a Decretal System of the UAE, which means the system is accepted by the national courts. With recent changes to laws related to cheques, both paper-based redundant cheques and new paperless digital direct debits carry equal weight when it comes to the law,” says Ummair Butt, Founder, and CEO of Direct Debit System.

The new service is supported by the National Bank of Fujairah (NBF), and it’s hoped that the platform will be fully operational before the end of 2022. Direct Debit Marketplace is already seeing huge interest from merchants and promises to drastically cut the time spent organizing recurring payments.

News

ESET Bets On Specialized Security AI At 0.5% The Training Cost

ESET says NeoCortex can estimate an attacker’s next move, with a kill switch and human oversight built in to keep it from going rogue.

Published

5 days ago

November 4, 2026

Dana Saadeh

eset bets on specialized security ai at 0.5% the training cost

A sign-in anomaly, a suspicious process launch and an unusual connection may look harmless alone. Together, they can describe an intrusion that is hard for security to teams to piece together.

To solve that problem, ESET announced ESET NeoCortex on November 4, 2026: a specialized foundational AI model for cybersecurity. It powers ESET LiveCortex, available within the ESET PROTECT Platform, which connects fragmented security signals and turns them into actionable incidents.

Filtering is the main selling point, with LiveCortex processing billions of raw telemetry events daily, and just 0.00111% of them contributing to incidents presented to customers. The aim is less alert fatigue and more analyst time spent on threats that matter.

NeoCortex is built on world-model architecture, learning how digital environments behave and how events relate. ESET says that lets it reconstruct missing incident context, recognize similar past cases and estimate an attacker’s likely next step – what the company calls “minus-one-day defense,” a chance to intervene before the next stage unfolds. ESET points to Black October, the week leading up to October 25, 2026, when critical security issues affecting PHP, Linux, GitLab and other key systems demanded rapid, prioritized responses, as the kind of moment where that context matters.

ESET’s internal research also suggests a specialized model like NeoCortex can be trained at up to 200 times lower cost than a large general reasoning model, while delivering more accurate, defense-focused results. The company credits optimized training, a focus on cybersecurity vocabulary, lower computing requirements and privately owned hardware.

Also Read: Dubai Says Its Deepfake Detector Needs Just 7 Seconds Of Video

“AI is accelerating both cyberattacks and cyberdefenses. With ESET NeoCortex, we are applying our AI investment to develop specialized foundational cybersecurity intelligence that remains under our control and strengthens, rather than replaces, human expertise,” said Juraj Malcho, Chief Technology Officer at ESET.

As part of the design, NeoCortex forms part of a layered architecture combining specialized models, deterministic controls, correlation logic, validation, auditability and expert human oversight. Safeguards include restricted sandboxes, read-only tools, continuous monitoring, defined usage and token limits, a kill switch and human oversight of critical response decisions. The model is also developed and self-hosted on ESET’s own infrastructure, which the company says reduces exposure to shifts among third-party AI providers, including commercial and geopolitical ones.