Tuesday, Oct 20, 2015
Dubai: China’s Alibaba Group and Dubai’s Meraas Holding have developed a mobile payment application that will one day be available across the Middle East.
The two companies signed a joint-venture earlier this year to form the Dubai-based IT company Yvolv, which provides cloud computing and storage services in the Middle East.
On Tuesday, at the Gitex Technology Week conference, the two companies officially launched Yvolv and unveiled their first jointly created mobile application Yvo.
Yvo is a mobile payment application that can be used to make book restaurants and cinema tickets and order home delivery services, among other features. The payment system was unveiled in a video as part of a presentation by Alibaba Group Vice-President Ethan Yu and Meraas Holding Group Chief Investment Officer Abdul Wahab Al Halabi.
The mobile application will first be linked with stores in Dubai, such as The Walk at Jumeirah Beach Residence and Boxpark. It will be rolled out across the UAE and greater Middle East, Al Halabi said.
Yvo user will be able to redeem points and rewards and it will be possible to link wristbands to the single Yvo account so that families can earn points together. A launch date for the mobile application was not announced and it is not currently available in the Apple Store.
Alibaba and Meraas signed the partnership agreement earlier this year, however, waited until this week to announce details of the venture.
In Tuesday’s presentation, Yu said Yvolv will offer Cloud and Project services in the region. The cloud services are elastic computing, database services, storage, large scale computing as well as security and admin. On the project side there is digital consulting, system integration, customer solutions development, small and medium enterprise (SME) support and training and hardware support and training.
Yvolv plans to target customers across the entire Middle East and will open a data centre in Dubai in early 2016, Yu said on Sunday at Gitex.
There were also suggestions Yvolv will develop mobile applications and services with Al Halabi saying the Yvo application was just “one example” of what the partnership can do.
By Alexander Cornwell Staff Reporter
Gulf News 2015. All rights reserved.
