Manama - BENEFIT, the Kingdom’s innovator and leading company in Fintech and electronic financial transactions services held its Annual General Meeting yesterday. The Group has reported a net profit of BHD 1.4 million for the year ended 31st December 2020 attributable to the equity shareholders of the Group, as compared to a net profit of BHD 3.3 million for 2019. Total net assets at 31st December 2020 amounted to BHD 21.9 million (31 December 2019: BHD 22.3 million).

In addition to the company’s financial performance, BENEFIT witnessed accelerated growth of electronic payments due to the National Wallet (BenefitPay) with 50 million transactions at a value of over BD 2.3 billion, representing 793% growth in volumes and over 545% in values. Growth was also experienced in POS and E-Commerce services at 40% and 84% respectively.

Furthermore, the Electronic Funds Transfer System (EFTS) transactions experienced significant growth in 2020 with over 47 million transactions recorded in Fawri+ service in comparison to 6.3 million transactions in 2019, which is a growth of 652%. Around 8.7 million transactions were carried out on Fawri with a growth rate of 23% as compared to 2019. Fawateer service has noticed a substantial growth in 2020 as well, with 4.19 million transactions representing a 111% growth rate compared to 2019.

During 2020, BenefitPay was the focus of the BENEFIT strategy and roadmap through the implementation and launch of new features within the application. Additionally, BENEFIT introduced new application features included split payment, request to pay, UI/UX enhancements for better customer experience, account balance information, the enablement of remittance and car parking counter payment, all of which helped increase the penetration of electronic payments in cash-based sectors during the Covid19 situation.

Chairman of BENEFIT; Mr. Mohamed Ebrahim Albastaki stated, “BENEFIT recorded landmark achievements in 2020. Major initiatives included the launch of the national Tokenization service in collaboration with CBB and Banks, which enables mobile contactless payments (NFC), empowering access by allowing the eKYC shared platform to cater for digital onboarding, and the launch of fuel payments through BenefitPay, which has truly transformed a cash centric segment into one which is electronic and innovative.”

He added, “I would like to thank our stakeholders and esteemed partners; the Central Bank of Bahrain, our stakeholders and financial institutions their collaborative support and continuous effort to ensure success for the overall ecosystem.

Chief Executive of BENEFIT; Abdulwahed ALJanahi in his statement to shareholders, “Despite the onset of a Pandemic and the strict measures that have taken a financial toll on many organizations including BENEFIT, the Group continued its commitment towards advancing the digitization of the payment infrastructure in Bahrain and thus 2020 was a transformational year full of digital services offered by BENEFIT to its stakeholders and the society.”

BENEFIT continued to evolve their existing services which included a major upgrade of its E-Commerce (Payment Gateway) platform, enhancements of the Bahrain Credit Reference Bureau (BCRB) digital integration with various stakeholders to ensure the offering of complete digital services, and extended its business shared services to the new breed of financial technology service providers in the Fintech domain such as PSPs, TPPs, Start-ups and others.

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