MEA UAE Business Awards 2017

22 MEA MARKETS / UAE BUSINESS AWARDS 2017 , Wirecard is Europe’s leading specialist for payment processing and issuing services, with an ever growing presence in the UAE. We explore its work in the region and examine the secrets behind its success. Best Payment Services Provider - Dubai Founded in 1999, Wirecard is the world’s leading specialist for payment processing and issuing. Wirecard Processing is part of the Wirecard Group, headquartered in Aschheim, Germany, which is a leading provider of electronic payment processing, card issuance, mobile payments, banking and risk management services for banks, financial institutions (FIs), mobile network operators (MNOs), merchants and other service providers in the payments industry ecosystem. Wirecard A.G., the parent company of the Group, was set up at the turn of the century in 1999, took over Infogenie Europe A.G.in 2005 and listed on the Deutsche Boerse in the subsequent year. Ever since the un-bottling of the (Info) genie, the Group has been on a roll and has grown organically and inorganically into a global conglomerate with a string of more than 30 companies spread over seven continents Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, South America, Oceania and the newly discovered Zealandia. The Group has a couple of licenced financial institutions (FIs) in its fold e.g. Wirecard Bank licensed by the German regulator BAFIN and Wirecard Solutions licensed by the UK Financial Services Authority (FSA). The two FIs facilitate banking, issuing and acquiring services across the Single European Payment Area (SEPA) region and the United Kingdom (UK). Armed with issuing and acquiring licences from all major card associations, Wirecard is an acknowledged leader in pre-paid card issuance and acquiring (both brick-and- mortar and e-commerce) on both sides of the Channel. Further, the bank is an active player in travel and mobility segment with a large portfolio of airlines, cruise lines, hotels, rail and tour operators reposing their faith in its solutions. Wirecard, with over 25,000 customers and counting has recorded unprecedented and sustained growth since inception with transaction volumes crossing EUR 60 billion, revenues topping the EUR one billion mark, EBITDA exceeding EUR 300 million in the year gone by and is today valued at EUR 5.44 billion (market capitalisation). Indeed, the meteoric rise has reinforced brand Bavaria already famous for its heady brew, the Beamer and Bayern Munich. The extension from Bavaria to Arabia was an offshoot of the Group’s strategic plan of provided an integrated offering across all areas of electronic payments and risk management was insourcing of the processing business. Thus, was born the idea of acquiring a processor and the Group bought the controlling stake in Dubai-based Procard Services FZ LLC in 2010 and rechristened it as Wirecard Processing FZ LLC. Ever since, the processing operations have been central to the Group’s ambitions in the payments arena and have fuelled the Group’s seemingly insatiable appetite for expansion in markets as diverse as North America, South Asia and the Asia-Pacific. WDP, for its part, has been more than keeping pace and has come a long way since its acquisition by the Wirecard Group. Today, the Company provides cutting edge, high-availability, fully redundant data centre and disaster recovery infrastructure across three time zones at Munich, Dubai and Singapore (another one planned across the Atlantic in Philadelphia). The Company has a wide reach being a member service provider (MSP) registered with most of the major card associations i.e. VISA, MasterCard and JCB and is now engaged in expanding its footprint to two of the most populous countries in the world, China and India through certification with Union Pay and Rupay. What distinguishes WDP from other Third Party Processors (TPPs) is the understanding of the intricacies of the payments domain derived from the close association with the in-house Wirecard Bank as also the willingness to go the extra mile to provide quality assurance through a dedicated team of over 100 specialists with access to the latest test tools, simulators and methodologies. In keeping with its lineage, WDP is a strong believer in perfectionism that is the UA170028 hallmark of the German ethos. Accordingly, the Company has made significant investments in acquiring, upgrading and customising the card hosting and processing platforms as well as ramping up the associated infrastructure to meet the requirements and expectations of internal stakeholders and other customers. The challenges that WDP has faced on the way have been immense and formidable. The Company embarked on its journey with an employee base of less than half a dozen with the objective of providing a full range of issuing and acquiring processing services and pitted itself against competitors that generally employ orders of magnitude more employees. The lean and mean setup required an out-of-the-box approach with accent on quality and a clearly articulated focus on the ability to attract and retain talent. The handful of employees (half-a-dozen) at the time of acquisition has since proliferated to a team of over one hundred highly-experienced payment card industry professionals drawn from wary competitors across 15 countries and five continents who have coalesced perfectly and work in unison to create the winning Wirecard workplace. The Company prides itself on the fact that on average 80% of all new joiners are referrals from existing employees. Another source of gratification is the extremely low turnover as