Exclusive - MontyPay Facilitating Global Payment Collection

As the digital world evolves, companies all over the globe strive to make their way into the digital realm. Although payment gateways have been present for years, they keep upgrading their operational ways and features to remain at the top of the industry. MontyPay, a digital payment gateway, provides a seamless and global payment experience, giving it an edge over the competition. 

Inside Telecom has met with Noel Moukheiber, MontyPay’s General Manager (GM), to discuss the latest product features and benefits.        

INSIDE TELECOM: What is MontyPay, and when was it launched?

Moukheiber: MontyPay, a subsidiary of Monty Finance UK, is a digital payment gateway launched in 2021. We offer a smart platform that helps merchants collect their payments effortlessly and securely. Our team is focused on helping our clients run and grow their businesses by enhancing the user experience and resolving their pain points. Being an innovative payment service provider, we aim to position MontyPay as one of the Fintech leaders in the world.         

INSIDE TELECOM: What are the vision and goals of the company?       

Moukheiber: Our vision is to become a payment hub for all merchants worldwide, providing the most advanced platform with the latest features and various payment methods. We develop our solution based on our customers’ needs, and we constantly strive to exceed their expectations. Most of all, we believe in building long-term relationships with our acquirers and merchants, in order to keep growing.         

INSIDE TELECOM: What are the different services and products MontyPay provides?    

 Moukheiber: At MontyPay, we combine the online shopping experiences with the digital world by connecting payments to our gateway platform.     

We offer a wide range of features, including but not limited to: 

• Smart Routing and Cascading: We boost our merchants’ transactions approval rate. We support our international merchants in their different countries, and we route their transactions through foreign acquirers based on many factors such as currency transaction amount, payment scheme, etc.       

This feature helps minimize the transaction costs and increase the acceptance rate.     

• Online and mobile checkout: We provide a consolidated platform that supports numerous plugins and SDKs for both online stores and mobile apps, allowing merchants to manage all their online payments with a single login.      
• Pay by link and QR Code: Merchants can now generate more revenue by collecting their money quickly and immediately. They create an invoice in just a few seconds and send a payment link or QR code by email, WhatsApp, or social media platforms.      
• Recurring Billing: Our platform supports tokenization, which helps merchants to create recurring billing such as membership or subscription simply once and then collect payments seamlessly and securely.   
• Installments:  We offer easy payments facilities to our merchants’ clients by providing a win-win solution. Customers can convert their purchases into installments without going through a bank, which will allow the merchants to sell even more.         
• Crypto Payments: Our merchants can now accept crypto payments and get paid in Euro. We allow merchants to accept payments in Bitcoin and 30+ other cryptocurrencies. This can save a business up to 80 percent in payment costs.       

On top of that, we are building a Merchant Mobile App providing our customers with a seamless experience. They can access their dashboard, analytics, and transactions details directly from their mobile. The app will be launched in the second quarter (Q2) of 2022.              

INSIDE TELECOM: In which countries does MontyPay operate? Do you have any expansion plans soon?        

Moukheiber: In a brief period, MontyPay gained the trust of leading banks and financial institutions. We are currently live in the European Union (EU) countries, UK, Australia, Lebanon, Jordan, and Nigeria.        

Our business development team is working aggressively to cover more countries in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and North/South America.        

Our strategic acquiring partners are selected carefully to provide merchants with a broader selection of payment solutions. We build relationships based on trust and professionalism.       

INSIDE TELECOM: Given that the Payment Gateway is an already existing business, how do you plan to differentiate yourself from the competition?        

Moukheiber: Our strengths are our team, technology, and transparency.   We differentiate ourselves from the competition through the tailored services that we provide to our merchants, a dedicated account manager and a one-to-one technical and operation support. Moreover, we offer a live chat feature to our merchants so they can communicate with our team directly from their platform.        

On the other hand, our technology is both advanced and user-friendly. It’s built to be intelligent. Our research and development (R&D) team is keen on implementing the latest payment trends and features to improve our platform.        

Transparency is one of our core values. Not just on the pricing level but also in terms of integrity and trust which are the foundation of our relations with our customers, employees, partners, and investors.            

INSIDE TELECOM: What customer base is MontyPay aiming to target?        

Moukheiber: We are open to working with all kinds of businesses, from startups to large enterprises, and we treat them all equally. Our focus is on online stores, education, travel agencies, insurance companies, and other merchants looking to accept cards or any other alternative payments.        

International businesses and companies pertaining to same group will have one platform and integration for their different entities, which is why we will be their preferred partner. In other words, they will be able to manage all their payments through MontyPay.     

INSIDE TELECOM: How is the market responding to this industry? Where do you see the payment services industry heading?        

Moukheiber: With the pandemic and global lockdowns, businesses and consumers increasingly went digital, providing and purchasing more goods and services online. We are observing growth as we move towards less cash to more digital and contactless payments.        

Cross-border transactions are increasing. E-commerce broke the traditional local shopping habits and exposed SMEs to global markets. We also enable the acceptance of new alternative payment types such as digital wallets, crypto, etc. Countries worldwide are moving towards adopting the Alternative Payment Methods (APM), which will soon be the norm.        

INSIDE TELECOM: How are monetary transactions secured through MontyPay?        

Moukheiber: MontyPay’s platform is fully compatible with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard   (PCI DSS) security standards (version 3.2.1) to ensure the safety of the cardholder’s data. The platform’s advanced risk management system utilizes a premium fraud management tool to detect, analyze, and prevent potential fraudulent transactions.        

Apart from the in-house security team, we work with the best risk scoring services to identify suspicious transactions. Our operation team immediately informs the merchant of any red flags.  Our platform also supports 3D Secure 2.0 to deliver a smoother and more integrated user experience.        

INSIDE TELECOM: What are MontyPay’s strengths and the main challenges that it is facing?        

Moukheiber: MontyPay is part of Monty Group, which paved a very successful path with Monty Mobile, established in 1998. We are leveraging this success to gain our partners’ confidence and trust. The platform focuses on the merchant. We are a lifetime business partner that stands by our clients by facilitating the process and providing a fast onboarding, settlement, and installment option to their users.        

Our challenges are to keep up with the local market regulations and introduce solutions that enable merchants to meet these regulations and accept different types of payments that are most secure. The key for businesses is to understand the payment preferences of each country, as they vary widely.        

INSIDE TELECOM: Define MontyPay’s relation with financial institutions like Banks, as well as the company’s current runway and future funding plans?    

Moukheiber: MontyPay has secured the required seed funding from its sponsor, Monty Mobile Group. From now on and in line with its product roadmap and expansion plan, we are planning to go for its Pre-Serie A fundraising round by Q2-Q3 2022.    

The early-stage financing will be mainly deployed to gain organic clients through marketing campaigns, hire staff in key positions, and enhance its technology to offer new advanced features.    

INSIDE TELECOM: As the General Manager of a startup, what makes you believe that MontyPay will turn out to be a success story?     

Moukheiber: MontyPay will succeed because of our visionary Chairman, Mr. Mountasser Hachem, who’s seeking to build the most advanced digital payment gateway, and because of our dedicated and strong team who’s working hard to make this happen.    

Our objective is to empower our customers with a solid omnichannel experience. We know that there will be many challenges, but we look forward to working with our partners and clients to achieve great success.   

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