Session: Unlocking MENA Gaming Growth Through Local Payment Methods - Faisal Al Bitar, Tamatem.

Uh yes. So our our next uh speaker is um FAL. I hope I'm pronouncing that right.
You got it.
Um and you're going to be talking about unlocking MENA gaming growth. So
um away you go. Thank you very much.
Hello everyone. Can you guys hear me in the back?
Yep. Perfect. Thank you. Um so my name is Fisal Bar and I'm the managing director of Tomatum Plus. Uh Tomatum Plus is a subsidiary of Tomatum Games. We are a mobile gaming publisher focused on localizing games for the Mina market.

And as Tomatum Plus, we are a direct to consumer platform uh supporting game developers and monetizing outside of Apple and Google with a focus on the Mina uh region. Um so let me start first. Um today I'll be talking about how do you unlock the Mina uh gaming market growth uh and focusing on local uh payment methods. So I think the first thing is what's important is really to introduce what is the Mina market uh which is consists of the Middle East and Northern Africa uh that spans from Morocco from the west all the way to u United Arab Emirates in the east. And when you look at the Mina market, it can be divided into three sub regions. You have the Gulf area where you know most probably a lot of the countries there. Saudi Arabia, uh, United Arab Emirates, the Levant, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, and then Northern

Africa, which is Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria. And what's very unique about this region, it's very diverse in terms of sub regions, yet there are a lot of similarities in terms of the language that's being spoken, religion, uh, as well as similarities in culture and tradition. And what makes this very unique in terms of a region with a 500 million population, it had it has one of the youngest populations across the globe. So more than 67% of the population is under the age of 35 and it has one of the world leading connectivity in terms of high smartphone penetration and internet penetration where in specific markets it can reach over 100%. So a lot of the user a lot of the people in the Mina region are mobile first. And then finally it has also a very high purchasing power where um the median median wage disposable income in

specific markets ex exceeds around $2,000. So it's a very high based consumer market. And when you look at these key demographics, um, this makes it quite interesting when you're when you're looking into gaming because you have a a young, highly connected u population that has the consumption means and high spending power in terms of gaming. And today the region um is valued over 7 billion. And if I'm just going to focus on the three biggest markets, which are Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Egypt, you'll see that player spend in 2024 reached over $2 billion. And it's estimated that in 2028, it'll reach over $2.7 billion. Um, in 2024, there are more than 50 million gaming users in these three markets, which represents almost 40% of the population. And it's estimated by 2028 the number of

gaming users will increase over 60 million. And this is just focusing on the three biggest markets where the Mina region consists more than 27 countries. What's also interesting about the Mina region is that it has one of the highest ARPO globally. In Saudi Arabia the average revenue per paying user is around $270. That's eight times larger than China. Yet with how attractive this region is growing and the key demographics, there still remains to be a challenge. And one of the biggest challenge uh in gaming looking into this region is the lack of access to payment methods and the ability to make a purchase. Uh so based on a survey more than 20 21% of the people uh mentioned that they weren't able to buy in-game content due to the lack of access to local payment methods or pre

preferred payment methods. Others also had the ability to purchase but yet most of their credit cards were restricted for international payments or currency lockations. And the reason why we tend to see these barriers in gaming uh barriers in purchasing in gaming is that today the Mina region more than 67% of the population is underbanked or unbanked meaning that they do not have access to a basic credit card or a financial means. And when you think about today in terms of gaming and inapp purchase, if you don't have a credit card or a debit card, then you're not able to make a per a transaction inside Apple and Google. Um yet uh as well in markets like Egypt and Iraq, banking penetration is below 40%. So markets like Iraq and Egypt, cash still remains to be dominant. Um

however postco has really played a major shift in the in the in the MINA region and in in nature in terms of how people have been paying. So digital payment method adoption in the region increased from 9% to 70%. So there was a rise of new alternative payment methods that were introduced in the market and these were driven by fintech solutions that are offering a more convenient and cheaper and more accessible uh payment providers to the local users. Um and a lot of these payment methods became the primary ways of how users today actually purchase. uh so if we take the example of wallets today wallets digital wallets have become the preferred digital payment in the region. So Egypt by itself is a is a population of 100 million more than 60

more than 60 million today of the Egyptian users have access to a digital wallet. So these alternative payment methods that are being driven by either the fintex or the telecoms are really becoming the primary ways of how people are paying and we're seeing multiple key payment trends that are driving the digital adoption of new payment means. So we talked about wallets um and the nature of why these wallets are growing is that they offer a much simpler onboarding process for customers to open a full digital experience. They offer lifestyle services and rewards that really attracts and encourages users to get to make a purchase in order to earn cash back. And some of these wallets have now generated more than 20 million users uh in their specific market. Also, we're seeing a trend of new domestic card payments, which are cards that are processed on local rails, meaning the transaction stays in the country and

does not go globally through Visa and Mastercard. that's really being pushed by different governments. Today, companies in in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, more than 80% of the transactions are being processed through these local payment rails and not Visa and Mastercard. Third is instant payments. We're also seeing a rise of new instant payments where uh they're becoming much simpler for the users to make a peer-to-peer purchase without entering any type of credit card details but just using an alias or a mobile number. And then finally, buy now pay later. I'm I'm sure you've probably all heard of buy now pay laters globally. And these have become uh there's there has become a rise in the Middle East in terms of adoption because uh most of the Middle East as we've spoken are young in nature. So they are looking for a cheaper alternative to a credit card with a zero interest bearing. So companies like Tabby and Tamara today

have more than 10 million users and are processing over $7 billion. So all of these key payment trends are now shaping the Middle East and shaping how users are paying. And if we look at an example of taking a country like Saudi Arabia in 2020 almost 60% of the transactions in Saudi Arabia were cash. And if we look at 2024 that has dropped to 22% and 33% of all payments that are um going through Saudi Arabia have now become through digital wallets. And we estimate that in 2020 2030 and beyond digital payments cash will start to disappear and most of that will be retraicted into uh new and digital payments. So what does that we talked about a lot about what's happening in the key key payment trends. What does that all mean in gaming? It means one thing. The growth of gaming and expanding and scaling requires the ability to accept

alternative local payment methods. And this is why direct to consumer is a necessity for growth. And when we look at direct to consumer from everything that's been happening in the US and Europe, a lot of it was driven due to profitability, increasing profit. Yet in the Mina region, what has been driving direct consumer for over 10 plus years is the lack of access to payment methods and the inability of users making payments. Um just a very quick brief if you haven't heard about direct to consumer and what's happening really um globally in the market. Um, the giants Apple and Google are now starting to open their ecosystems, allowing alternative platforms and payment methods to be able to be integrated, which means now game developers can start to route some of their transactions outside of Apple and Google. And that provides multiple benefits from the ability of managing

your own user and user data to uh dropping the 30% fee that Apple and Google takes down to as low as 5% based on your payment local gateway. Um and then more importantly where we see the biggest rise and biggest drive in the Middle East which is really access to to local alternative payment methods that are the most suitable to our users. And then finally um the giving you the ability of pricing and freedom where now you can pack where you can start selling packages beyond the limitations of Apple and Google the $199. So example we talked about how in the Middle East you have a lot you have a high affluent market. Um we see customers that are willing to purchase bundles and items that are worth a,000 and $5,000. So those cannot be sold inside of Apple and Google, but giving them the ability to buy them off the store is quite uh crucial. So for the past 2 years, what

we've been focusing on is really supporting international gaming companies to monetize outside of Apple and Google and reach the bigger market, which is the 500 million users. And what we've done is we've built a payment network that now connects with more than 42 payment methods across the Mina region um across 10 countries. So if users want to buy through mobile credit, buy now pay later, instant payments, cash and any other uh payment means. And we package our payment network in two types of products. We have a web store. So for game developers who do not have their web store, they can instantly launch a storefront where they'll add their items, offer localized payment methods in order to complete the transaction. And for game developers that have their own checkout solutions, they can just integrate our single API and get access to 40 plus payment methods in the Mina region.

And just to show you a very quick case study of a game development that we're a game developer, a partner that we're working with where we've given them access to our local payment methods. Today, more than 50% of their revenue is being generated off outside of Apple and Google through uh the web store. Not only that, it has helped them increase their ARPO by 100%. and increase their checkout conversion by 30% by giving the ability to access new markets and new users that were unable to make purchases on the app store. And not only them with them, we work with a lot of global clients like Exola, Garina, SOA that utilize our payment network in order to give their users the ability to purchase the way they would like to purchase. [snorts] So, if you are a game developer um and you're interested in expanding or reaching the larger segment of the Mina region, we can help you by partnering up

and giving you access to our local payment methods. And the benefits of working with us is that you save time, resources, and money for a lot of your teams. If it's your tech team, if it's your business development team and your compliance and operations where it's a single contract, single API and you get access to this entire network. You can start accepting multiple currencies through a single operational account and you only need to rely on one partner which is crucial and then finally giving access to your users to pay the way they prefer to pay. And I think and this is just to show you in terms of the responsibilities between what we would take and what a game developer would take. So we're really managing the entire payment experience. And more importantly, the game developer is focusing on what they do best, which is building great games and managing the relationship with their customers. Uh yeah, and that's all I have. If you're interested in unlocking the

world's fastest growing mobiles game market with a single API, please scan our QR and uh would love to meet up uh while I'm here to discuss how we can support you guys. Thank you. [applause] We've got time for a few questions if anyone wants to ask anything. It's just a quick question. Do you also apart from uh helping with unlocking the monetization for the Mina region, do you also offer other services that help with expanding into the Mina region? because I know it can be quite sensitive especially when it comes to the language with I mean Arabic being quite different from English and uh a lot of the people that live in those regions preferring to work in in Arabic.
Uh definitely. So our core business is a

game publisher. So we do support game developers in offering different types of services in terms of um localization, translation, marketing, uh customer support, uh whale management. So yes, uh we've worked with different types of games and not only supporting them in localizing the payments but also in terms of accessing the markets.