Cashfree Payments Expands To MENA Region With Investment in Telr

Leading payments and API banking solutions company, Cashfree Payments (Cashfree) announced an equity investment of $15 million in Telr, a leading Payment Service Provider (PSP) in UAE and Saudi Arabia. With this investment, Cashfree becomes one of the largest shareholders in the company

Cashfree has already established itself as one of the leaders in the payment solutions space in India, with successful operationalization and scale-ups of industry-first solutions. Moreover, this strategic investment in Telr, will enable the company to launch its distinctive offerings in the MENA region utilizing Telr’s strong presence and payment infrastructure. In addition, Cashfree and Telr aim to develop a unified cross-border payments platform that would help Indian merchants accept payments from customers in the MENA region and vice-versa, via a single integration.

Telr, the UAE based award-winning payment gateway solutions provider, offers a unique platform that enables handling payments in over 120 currencies and 30 languages with the highest level of security. Through a single integration, Telr grants access to every payment method it offers, including Visa, Mastercard, American Express, UnionPay, Apple Pay, PayPal, SADAD, Mada and STCPay.

With its one-stop mindset, Telr extended its services even further, offering a complete solution for the ecommerce world, covering a wide range of financial and business services including, social commerce, QR Codes, digital invoicing, Telr Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) in collaboration with Tabby, Telr Finance in collaboration with LNNDO, a merchant financing program, and Telr Shops the easy-to-use tool for creating an online store in minutes.

The investment is highly significant for Cashfree as the MENA region offers a large, attractive and growing online market, with payments representing the highly developed sub-sector within the region’s fintech space. The MENA region is witnessing a continuous transition towards cashless transactions, with traditional brick-and- mortar businesses moving towards expanding online offerings. The e-commerce businesses are also witnessing a drastic shift from high street to online shopping and this trend is expected to grow even more.

Akash Sinha, CEO and Co-Founder, Cashfree Payments said, "We are elated with the strategic investment in Telr, which aligns well with our aspiration to be the leader in the rapidly evolving digital payments space in the MENA region and overall global expansion goals. Telr’s trusted presence and significant operations in the MENA region provides us an exciting opportunity. We are grateful to our key institutional investor Apis for helping us source and execute this strategic investment. We look forward to nurturing our partnership with Telr by leveraging our learnings and experience from the Indian market and enhancing our reach in the MENA region by introducing novel offerings.”

Khalil Alami, CEO and Founder, Telr said, “We are excited about this new investment into Telr. Joining forces with Cashfree Payments will further enable us to continue on our innovation and growth journey. Our offerings and partnerships aim to assist in reaching an integrated e-commerce ecosystem supporting the UAE in its transition into a cashless economy; and contributing to the KSA vision 2030. In short, this combined effort will translate into greater benefits for our customers and the markets we operate in.”

With over 50% market share among payment processors, Cashfree today leads the way in bulk disbursals in India with Cashfree Payouts. Recently, India’s largest lender, SBI invested in Cashfree underscoring the company’s role in building a robust payments ecosystem. Cashfree works closely with all leading banks to build the core payments and banking infrastructure that powers the company’s products and is also integrated with major platforms such as Shopify, Wix, Paypal, Amazon Pay, Paytm and Google Pay. Apart from India, Cashfree products are used in eight other countries including the USA, Canada and UAE.