Apaya and NymCard partner to bring real-time payments to UAE merchants

Source: Apaya

Apaya, the leading payment orchestration platform for the Middle East and Africa, and NymCard, CEMEA’s leading payments infrastructure provider, announced a strategic partnership to enable Open Finance-powered, real-time account-to-account (A2A) payments for merchants across the UAE via Al Tareq.

Through this partnership, Apaya enables merchant adoption through its no-code orchestration platform, while NymCard provides the licensed Open Finance payment infrastructure required to support secure, consent-driven A2A transactions in real-time.

“For Open Finance to succeed, merchants need more than just access to new payment rails – they need the tools to deploy them quickly alongside the providers they already work with,” said Michael Tomlins, co-founder and chief executive officer of Apaya.

“Our partnership with NymCard removes the technical complexity that has historically slowed adoption of innovative payment solutions. Merchants can now add Al Tareq to their checkout in minutes, not months, without writing a single line of code and without disrupting their existing payment stack.”

Through Apaya’s platform, merchants can incorporate NymCard’s solution into a unified checkout experience that works seamlessly with their existing payment service providers, whether for card payments, buy-now-pay-later, mobile wallets, or other local payment methods. Apaya’s intelligent routing technology enables merchants to orchestrate transactions across all connected providers, optimising for payment success rates and cost efficiency.

“Al Tareq extends NymCard’s payments infrastructure into Open Finance, enabling regulated, real-time account-to-account payments that move funds directly from consumers to merchants,” said Shiraz Ali, chief business officer at NymCard.

“Partnering with Apaya allows these capabilities to be delivered through a merchant-ready orchestration layer, making Open Finance payments practical and deployable at scale.”

Key benefits for merchants

UAE merchants using the Apaya-enabled NymCard implementation of Al Tareq benefit from:

• Instant settlement: Funds transferred directly to merchant accounts in real time through secure A2A flows
• Reduced costs: Lower transaction fees compared to traditional card payments
• Simple onboarding: No-code integration through Apaya’s merchant dashboard
• Unified checkout: Al Tareq presented alongside existing payment providers in a single experience in line with customisable business rules
• Intelligent orchestration: Smart routing to maximise transaction success across all providers
• No disruption: Works with merchants’ current PSPs for cards, BNPL, wallets, and more