Boubyan Bank has announced the conclusion of a partnership agreement with ExpandCart, a platform specialized in building online shops for business owners, companies, and retail shops, without the need to seek any technical expertise. This comes as a part of the bank’s continued strategy to cooperate with digital startups in order to provide the best services for its customers.

Hamad Al-Fouzan, Head of Innovation and Partnerships at Boubyan Bank, stated: “With the accelerating developments witnessed by the digital business and the ongoing growth of e-commerce in the region, Boubyan Bank always seeks to support and incentivize its customers from the SMEs, to offer their products and services in the market.”

Al-Fouzan added: “Accordingly, we started our cooperation with ExpandCart, the leader in online shops & digital marketing solutions, in order to enable business owners to set up their own e-stores. All they need to do through ExpandCart’s platform is to follow very easy and simple steps such as adding their own products and requesting to activate the payment and shipping services. Then, start to present and sell their products. All that can be done without the need for a technical team to create, manage, and market their entire store with all the technical operations involved.”

“Through this cooperation, Boubyan Bank offers a special and an exclusive offer on all ExpandCart’s packages for Boubyan Bank’s enterprise and SMEs’ customers. This comes in line with the bank’s strategy to support startups among its customers and to keep pace with the latest developments in the e-commerce arena to stimulate the business environments.”, Al-Fouzan added.

He went on to explain: “Boubyan Bank’s leadership in digital banking services drives it to enter into special partnerships with companies that offer special digital services, and ExpandCart offers this since it offers interactive & mobile friendly digital products and services in Arabic & English. Moreover, it provides more than 20 payment and shipping options in addition to the availability of project management and marketing services right from the beginning through an advisory team from ExpandCart’s engineers who work ceaselessly to provide innovative solutions to grow e-commerce.”

ExpandCart is the largest e-commerce platform in the Middle East, allowing enterprises & SMEs’ owners from around the world to avail from many services to create their online store quickly without the need for any technical background or assistance. Additionally, it provides marketing, support, and hosting services as well as digital marketing services, P.O.S and after sale services.

For his part, Eng. Amr Shawky, Executive Director of “ExpandCart”, stated that the partnership with Boubyan Bank is one of the ambitious steps within the company’s plan to expand and maximize its position and investments in the e-commerce market, emphasizing that the platform is always seeking professionalism, development, and providing the best e-commerce solutions for entrepreneurs in the MENA region.

Shawky said that e-commerce has succeeded in imposing itself strongly on all other traditional business models, and its importance has rapidly increased and has proven its effectiveness with the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic at the beginning of this year, adding: “We seek a major goal and proceed according to a clear vision in ExpandCart to simplify the process of buying and selling online through smart online stores, and to facilitate every step to our customers in starting their own business, from creating the store, adding products and integrating with payment and shipping companies, until receiving the first orders and delivering products to the customer’s hand.”

On his part, Mr. Fahad Al-Shatti, VC Manager at Agility, stated: “This partnership between Boubyan Bank & ExpandCart testifies to the bank’s excellence in supporting projects that keep up with the international developments, and its facilitation of e-commerce for customers, especially after all the earnings it made during the Covid-19 crisis.”

Al-Shatti added: “Agility has invested in IT to cope with the accelerating developments in the retail and logistics business, leading to cooperation with ExpandCart, which is one of the largest e-commerce platforms in the Arab world, as it was able to attract more than 5000 merchants who transformed their businesses to e-commerce.”

It is worth mentioning that e-commerce in the MENA region has grown to USD 8.3 billion, and is growing at an annual rate of 25%. It is also expected to reach USD 28.5 billion by 2022.