CashU is an Arabic

fintech Financial technology (abbreviated as fintech) refers to the application of innovative technologies to products and services in the financial industry. This broad term encompasses a wide array of technological advancements in financial services, ...

company providing a

digital wallet A digital wallet, also known as an e-wallet or mobile wallet, is an electronic device, online service, or software program that allows one party to make electronic transactions with another party bartering digital currency units for goods and s ...

and online payment services for customers in the

Middle East and North Africa The Middle East and North Africa (MENA), also referred to as West Asia and North Africa (WANA) or South West Asia and North Africa (SWANA), is a geographic region which comprises the Middle East (also called West Asia) and North Africa together ...

(MENA) region. The company was founded as a technology startup in July 2002 in association with online service company

Maktoob Yahoo! Maktoob () was an online services company founded in Amman (Jordan). Maktoob.com was known as the first ArabicEnglish email service provider. In 2009, Yahoo! acquired Maktoob.com, making it Yahoo!'s official arm in the MENA region. As of 31 ...

Amman Amman ( , ; , ) is the capital and the largest city of Jordan, and the country's economic, political, and cultural center. With a population of four million as of 2021, Amman is Jordan's primate city and is the largest city in the Levant ...

Jordan Jordan, officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is a country in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. Jordan is bordered by Syria to the north, Iraq to the east, Saudi Arabia to the south, and Israel and the occupied Palestinian ter ...

. It provided payment services for

online services. The company went through a number of rounds of investment from

venture capital fund Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in terms of number ...

s. Prior to its demise, the company had over 3.2 million users and was headquartered in Dubai and had offices in

and

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

. It was legally registered in the

British Virgin Islands The British Virgin Islands (BVI), officially the Virgin Islands, are a British Overseas Territories, British Overseas Territory in the Caribbean, to the east of Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands, US Virgin Islands and north-west ...

(BVI) for some years until its registration was moved to Dubai.

History

Early years

In 2002, CashU was launched as an alternative

online payment An e-commerce payment system (or an electronic payment system) facilitates the acceptance of electronic payment for offline transfer, also known as a subcomponent of electronic data interchange (EDI), e-commerce payment systems have become increa ...

method for the use of credit cards. The business grew quickly over the next few years with CashU providing payment services to its sister companies, online service company Maktoob and online commerce platform souq.com. On August 25, 2009,

Yahoo! Yahoo (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web portal that provides the search engine Yahoo Search and related services including My Yahoo, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, y!entertainment, yahoo!life, and its a ...

acquired its sister company

in a deal that exceeded $85 million. According to the agreement between the two companies, the deal did not include the rest of Maktoob’s products, including Cashu, Souq.com, Araby and Tahadi MMO games, which became part of ''Jabbar Internet Group'' headed by Maktoob , lately

Tiger Management Tiger Management Corp. is an American hedge fund and family office founded by Julian Robertson. The fund began investing in 1980 and wound down in March 2000-01. It continues to operate in direct public equity investments and seeding new inves ...

as it was major shareholder.

Souq Group subsidiary (2012–2015)

In 2012, ''Naspers Limited'' took a stake alongside ''Jabbar Internet Group'' and ''

Tiger Global Tiger Global Management, LLC (often referred to as Tiger Global and formerly known as Tiger Technology) is an American investment firm founded by Chase Coleman III, a former Tiger Management employee under Julian Robertson, in March 2001. It ma ...

'' in CashU and Souq.com, and so it was listed under the umbrella of Souq Group, which included Souq.com, Sukar.com and Qexpress (a logistics and

shipping company A shipping line or shipping company is a company whose line of business is ownership and operation of ships. Shipping companies provide a method of distinguishing ships by different kinds of cargo: # Bulk cargo is a type of special cargo that is ...

), as well as CashU. While Souq Group continued to focus on the

e-commerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) refers to commercial activities including the electronic buying or selling products and services which are conducted on online platforms or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile co ...

, CashU was growing towards cashless societies and servicing the

underbanked The underbanked is a characteristic describing people or organizations who do not (or volunteer to not) have sufficient access to mainstream financial services and products typically offered by retail banks and thus often deprived of banking serv ...

and started to move away from the vision of Souq, especially as the regulations and compliance for Electronic payment systems and

e-wallets A digital wallet, also known as an e-wallet or mobile wallet, is an electronic device, online service, or software program that allows one party to make electronic transactions with another party bartering digital currency units for goods and s ...

in particular were still in development in the region. In 2012, this resulted in CashU leaving the Souq Group. Later in 2013, CashU launched a new online payment gateway, ''Payfort''.

Management buyout (2015)

In December 2015, CashU Management purchased the company in the first

management buyout A management buyout (MBO) is a form of acquisition in which a company's existing managers acquire a large part, or all, of the company, whether from a parent company or individual. Management- and/or leveraged buyouts became noted phenomena of 19 ...

deal in the

Middle East The Middle East (term originally coined in English language) is a geopolitical region encompassing the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq. The term came into widespread usage by the United Kingdom and western Eur ...

. After the

was completed in 2016, CashU migrated its business to Singapore and got approved to operate as a

stored-value card A stored-value card (SVC) or cash card is a payment card with a monetary value stored on the card itself, not in an external account maintained by a financial institution. This means no network access is required by the payment collection termi ...

facility by the

Monetary Authority of Singapore The Monetary Authority of Singapore or (MAS), is the central bank and financial regulatory authority of Singapore. It administers the various statutes pertaining to money, banking, insurance, securities and the financial sector in general, as ...

(MAS). All CashU's merchants, vendors, and consumers were then required to maintain a full KYC (Know Your Customer) record that complied with MAS’ rules and regulations, which was a major step towards regulating the core business of CashU. This caused an immediate loss of business and irritation to the authorities of Saudi Arabia, who didn’t feel comfortable sharing its citizen ID’s with a non-regulated entity. Accordingly, the

Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority The Saudi Central Bank (), previously known as the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority (SAMA; ), established in 1952, is the central bank of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Despite the name change in 2020, the Saudi Central Bank has continued to use t ...

blocked CashU's website in Saudi Arabia on January 28, 2016.

UAE and return to Saudi Arabia (2016-2017)

On October 1, 2016, CASHU partnered with Mastercard and Noor Bank in the United Arab Emirates to launch the first prepaid virtual credit card in the region, which was approved by the Central Bank of the UAE. This product gave CashU legal approval to operate in the United Arab Emirates as a FinTech company in cooperation with Noor Bank. Later in October 2016, Al Bilad Bank in Saudi Arabia announced that it has entered into a strategic partnership with CashU to develop innovative payment products and services in Saudi Arabia. The partnership with Al Bilad Bank allowed CashU to recommence its operations in Saudi Arabia. In October 2017, CashU and Al Bilad Bank completed the compliance requirements of the ''Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority'' and received its approval to operate in Saudi Arabia again.

References

External links

*{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200504211026/https://web.archive.org/web/20190524072656/https://www.cashu.com/ , title=www.cashu.com , date=May 4, 2020 Payment service providers Maktoob 2002 establishments in Jordan Companies disestablished in 2018