NEOPAY and CBD partnership opens financing route for eligible UAE merchants
Eligible NEOPAY merchants can use their transaction activity to explore working capital financing and banking services from Commercial Bank of Dubai.
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
NEOPAY has partnered with Commercial Bank of Dubai, giving eligible merchants on its platform a route to working capital financing and other banking services.
Both companies frame the deal around small and medium-sized enterprises, which they say often struggle to secure financing in time. Under the arrangement, eligible NEOPAY merchants can use their transaction activity as the starting point for exploring financing options with CBD.
How the work divides
NEOPAY contributes the payments infrastructure and the merchant network. CBD contributes banking and financing expertise. The financing itself is aimed at growth, expansion, and the working capital that funds expenses, existing commitments, and new opportunities.
The role of payment data
Both firms say payment data gives lenders a clearer view of how a business is performing. That visibility is the mechanism the partnership rests on. A merchant's steady card and digital payment flows form a record a bank can assess, rather than a set of documents the borrower has to assemble after the fact.
For the merchant, the appeal is simple: a business processing payments through NEOPAY generates a continuous account of its revenue, and that account can accompany a financing request instead of standing apart from it. For CBD, the arrangement places the bank in front of a pool of merchants it would otherwise reach one at a time. For NEOPAY, financing becomes another service attached to an existing payments relationship.
What the executives said
Vibhor Mundhada, chief executive of NEOPAY, said SMEs want banking and payment solutions that work together rather than as separate products. Combining the two organisations' capabilities, he said, eases the path to merchant financing and supports growth ambitions.
Dhiraj Kunwar, general manager of retail and business banking at CBD, signed the agreement alongside Mundhada.
Why lenders look at transaction records
Financing gaps for smaller companies usually come down to what a lender can verify, not whether the business is sound. A payments provider already holds verified transaction records, so a bank able to read them has another way to assess a borrower whose accounts may not be in lender-ready form. Ties between banks and payment processors are one path to that, and it is the shape this agreement takes.
The deal is not limited to lending. NEOPAY and CBD say the partnership is intended to support SMEs with broader banking needs as well.
Featured image edited by Fintech News UAE, based on an image by NEOPAY and Commercial Bank of Dubai via press release.
