Citi and Mastercard Bring Smart Subscriptions to UAE Cardholders
Smart Subscriptions, built on Mastercard's Ethoca unit, lets Citi customers in the UAE view and manage recurring payments in the bank's app.
Nadia Mansour Nadia Mansour covers fintech across the UAE and MENA for Anecdoted -- digital banking, payments licences and the startups building around them. nadia@anecdoted.com
Citi cardholders in the UAE can now track and manage their recurring payments from inside the bank's mobile app. The service, Smart Subscriptions, was built with Mastercard and gathers a customer's active digital subscriptions into one place.
That covers streaming platforms and food delivery apps, among other services that bill on a repeating cycle. The point is visibility. Instead of working back through statements to find a charge that arrives every month, a customer sees the live subscriptions listed in the app and can act on them there.
The tool runs on Ethoca, a technology unit owned by Mastercard. Ethoca provides itemised digital receipts, which identify the merchant behind a particular subscription charge. Those receipts are what allow a cardholder to match an unfamiliar billing descriptor to a service they recognise, or to one they had forgotten about.
Standard statements usually show a merchant name and an amount, sometimes shortened to a trading name that means little to the person reading it. An itemised digital receipt goes further by tying the charge to the specific service. The difference matters most for small, frequent subscriptions, where a single unrecognised line can sit unnoticed for months.
Subscription billing is a recurring source of friction on both sides of a card transaction. A charge a customer cannot place often turns into a dispute, and a subscription that keeps billing after a card is reissued can end up as a declined renewal. Both outcomes start from the same gap: the customer does not know who is charging them.
Mastercard says the arrangement cuts chargebacks for merchants and reduces the number of unnecessary payment stops linked to subscription billing. For a merchant, the argument runs in the opposite direction from the cardholder's: a receipt that names the business is harder to mistake for fraud, so fewer customers escalate the charge.
Both companies have a stake in the outcome. Subscription spending is a large and growing slice of card volume, and the willingness of customers to keep a card on file for it depends on whether they trust the charges that appear. Clearer billing information removes one reason for a customer to reach for a different card or call the disputes line.
Gina Petersen-Skyrme, Senior Vice President and Country Manager for the UAE and Oman at Mastercard, said the Smart Subscriptions solution is a significant step in the two companies' joint efforts to shape the future of payments in the region.
Shamsa Al-Falasi, CEO of Citibank N.A., UAE and UAE Citi Country Officer and Banking Head, said the collaboration with Mastercard, which launches Smart Subscriptions globally from the UAE, reflects Citi's commitment to delivering world-class digital capabilities that empower clients.
The featured image for this article was edited by Fintech News UAE and is based on an image from Mastercard's website.
