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· Paypal's Arabic Website And Arabic-Speaking Customer Service Offering Is Now Live
· Arabic Launch Places Paypal Within Reach Of 400 Million Arabic Speaking Consumers And Merchants In Middle-East And North Africa
· Arabic Language Option Will Facilitate Further E- And M-Commerce Growth,
Dubai, UAE - PayPal has launched an Arabic version of its website and customer service to connect with a wider pool of e-commerce users across the Middle East & North Africa to the global marketplace, and to drive growth of its online payment services in the region. To date the company has built a following of 173 million active users globally, whilst positioning itself as the leading online payment solution provider in the region.
As Middle East & North Africa's e-commerce and m- commerce sectors continue to thrive - with almost two thirds of UAE consumers having shopped online in the past 12 months* - the website now allows more than 400 million prospects in the Middle East to sign-up on PayPal in their own language empowering Arabic users to communicate with consumers and merchants in their native language, whilst benefiting from the reach of the global marketplace.
"We see huge growth potential in the Middle East & North Africa region - where registration has jumped significantly in recent years, across the 12 countries in which we are currently present," said Kivanc Onan, Regional Director, PayPal Middle East & North Africa & Turkey.
"E-commerce is booming in MENA, and the launch of the Arabic site is set to open up a world of opportunities to hundreds of millions of Arabic speakers eager to be connected with more products, services and consumers around the globe."
During the development stages of the Arabic website, the company turned to Arabic speaking PayPal enthusiasts for an official hackathon to develop, test and launch the platform successfully.
Hisham Abdulhalim, Head of Quality for Arabic at PayPal, commented on the hackathon, "It's incredible how many PayPal engineers felt a connection to the region and wanted to help bring a new language to PayPal. They worked extremely hard to develop new and fresh designs, implementing content right-to-left - in a traditional Arabic format - for the first time in most PayPal products".
In the past 12 months, PayPal has demonstrated its commitment to providing faster, easier and safer payment solutions in Middle East & North Africa. In May 2015, PayPal merchant services were launched in Egypt - empowering merchants to sell to a global market of 169 million active PayPal customers.
Alongside on-going regional expansion, PayPal is in a period of transformation. In July 2015, PayPal started trading on NASDAQ as PYPL, as a new standalone public company.
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About PayPal
At PayPal (Nasdaq: PYPL), we put people at the center of everything we do. Founded in 1998, we continue to be at the forefront of the digital payments revolution. Last year we processed 4 billion payments, of which 1 billion were made on mobile devices. PayPal gives people better ways to connect to their money and to each other, helping them safely access and move their money and offering a choice of how they would like to pay or be paid. With our 173 million active customer accounts, we have created an open and secure payments ecosystem that people and businesses choose to securely transact with each other online, in stores and on mobile devices. PayPal is a truly global payments platform that is available to people in 203 markets, allowing customers to get paid in more than 100 currencies, withdraw funds to their bank accounts in 57 currencies and hold balances in their PayPal accounts in 26 currencies. For more information on PayPal, visit https://about.paypal-corp.com. For PYPL financial information visit https://investor.paypal-corp.com.
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Media Relations Contact: Helen Pickerill, Senior Account Manager, Grayling UAE helen.pickerill@grayling.com
© Press Release 2015
