MBME Group, a UAE-based FinTech company, has announced that it will list its shares on the growth market of the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (ADX) on April 17. As part of its expansion strategy, the 100% Emirati family business will become the first FinTech company to list on the UAE’s financial markets. MBME’s platform offers payment collection and aggregation services to government and private sector entities, as well as retail customers, and operates more than 4,000 touchpoints across the UAE for 3.2 million customers.
The capital increase from the listing will be used by MBME to further its global expansion plans and initiate horizontal and vertical integrations via product roll-outs and acquisitions. The pandemic has led to increased demand for digital payments and other FinTech services, with digital payments expected to grow to $8.26 trillion by 2024, up from $4.4 trillion in 2020, according to Statista.
MBME’s chairman, Ali Aldhaheri, said that being listed will enable the company to offer higher-margin, innovative products and services to both new and existing customers in local, regional, and global markets, while also advancing the development of market-leading proprietary technological know-how. The company’s listing on the ADX will further bolster the UAE’s reputation as a hub for technology and innovation, and the ADX’s position as the Arab world’s second-largest bourse, with a market capitalisation of about Dh2.7 trillion ($735 billion).
In recent years, the ADX has experienced a surge of listings amid Abu Dhabi’s plans to boost its capital markets. Companies that listed on the bourse last year include Borouge, the Abu Dhabi Ports Group, Abu Dhabi healthcare provider Burjeel Holdings and Bayanat, a geospatial data products and services provider owned by artificial intelligence and cloud computing company G42. This year, Adnoc Gas and Presight AI, a G42 company focused on data analytics and artificial intelligence, was listed on the ADX. Supermarkets operator Lulu and Pure Health, a unit of Abu Dhabi-listed International Holding Company, have also announced plans to list in Abu Dhabi this year.