A New Era for Online Payment Authentication: Areeba to Introduce Biometric Reading in MENA

Leading Middle Eastern supplier of payment processing services, areeba sal, is expanding its collaboration with Netcetera, a Swiss payment authority. The implementation of the most recent 3-D Secure protocol, backed by Netcetera’s Access Control Server, kicked off this collaboration in 2020. (ACS).

As the most practical way for its customers and their cardholders to conduct safe and flawless online transactions, areeba offers Out-of-Band authentication (OOB) with biometric reading (fingerprint scan or face recognition) in collaboration with Netcetera.

This makes it possible for areeba to offer its issuers’ clients (banks and fintechs) cutting-edge authentication experiences through their mobile apps in order to build personalised authentication experiences for cardholders that stop fraud. The cardholder can use fingerprint or even facial recognition to verify payment through the mobile app rather than entering a password or waiting for a text message.

“areeba is always an early adopter of cutting-edge technologies to provide its customers with the highest level of fraud protection. We are pleased to launch the OOB with Netcetera, a company that combines quality, reliability, service, and innovation. Everything goes smoothly when you have a partner like this. When we started our cooperation, we recognized the big potential for growing the business of our customers and for improving their lifestyles. This guides us during our work. By accepting what Netcetera enables as proven success in other developed markets we act proactively to our customer’s demands and keep their competitiveness at the highest level” – stated Maher Mikati, CEO of areeba.

The card-not-present authentication solution has customer protection as a priority but combined with the daily needs and habits as is the quick modern lifestyle of the customers, reaches the highest interest and daily usage in the western world already.

According to Statista, in 2022, the digital identity solutions market – of which biometric technology is a major component – was valued at 28 billion US with a forecast of exceeding 70 billion US by 2027.

Ramy Fouda, Director of Sales, Middle East and Africa at Netcetera, commented:

“MENA is such a strong market with still great potential. And here at Netcetera we have the expertise, we understand the local regulations, and we have customers and online shoppers keen to experience the latest technology. Strengthening this partnership with a brand like areeba makes us extremely proud, it makes us feel part of boosting the MENA regional digital payments.” Mikati added that “Great customer experience and journey is the current, but even more the demand of the future. areeba will continue to attract customers by bringing the latest technology to our markets”.”