NBO partners with UnionPay

As per the information detailed in the press release, the partnership between NBO and UnionPay allows all merchants in Oman to provide the latter’s contactless payment to customers, offering a cost-effective, secure, and simple payment experience at the point of acceptance for businesses and cardholders. Additionally, the tap-and-go payment experience enables merchants to accept cards from China, as well as an expanding network of more than 75 countries, where UnionPay established itself as a card issuance business. Currently, UnionPay has an acceptance network spread across 180 countries, with it being one of the largest payment schemes.

According to NBO’s officials, launching UnionPay acceptance across its merchant network focuses on supporting customers in growing their business. The bank underlined that it aims to further expand its partnership with UnionPay and offer more products to its customers and business partners in the future. Moreover, NBO intends to allow all its merchants to begin accepting UnionPay cards by mid-2025. Representatives from UnionPay stated that by enabling cardholders from 75 countries, including customers travelling from China, the company credits that the contactless payment experience is set to support local businesses scale their operations. Furthermore, the payment solution intends to be similar to what Chinese customers experience in their country leveraging mobile banking apps, Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, Huawei Pay, Mi Pay, and physical UnionPay contactless payment cards. Both the bank and UnionPay intend to allow the solution to provide new categories of merchants willing to accept the company’s cards, offering customers a secure, fast, and simple payment experience.

In addition to its collaboration with UnionPay, NBO also recently partnered with PayMate, an India-based B2B digital payments company, aiming to digitise and automate B2B payments using Visa Business Credit Cards. The partnership was set to allow NBO’s corporate and SME clients to leverage their Visa Business Credit Cards for completing supplier payments, removing the need for a dedicated payment system. This was intended to simplify the process by transferring funds directly into their bank accounts through the NBO Visa Business Credit Card.

In recent months, UnionPay entered several partnerships to advance its development strategy and expand its global footprint. At the beginning of January 2024, Standard Bank partnered with UnionPay to introduce ecommerce acceptance in several countries in Africa. Through this collaboration, the two organisations focused on facilitating simplified ecommerce transactions for UnionPay cardholders across Standard Bank Group’s online merchants. UnionPay was set to leverage its cardholder base and provide convenient services through this collaboration to an expanding global community of cardholders and merchants.

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