UAE’s social P2P payments solution, Ziina, raises a pre-seed round of US$850,000

10x Industry

Mita Srinivasan
10x Industry
Published:

UAE’s social P2P payments solution, Ziina, raises a pre-seed round of US$850,000

Ziina is available on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store for download – eyes growth in Saudi Arabia in 2021

Ziina, the UAE’s first licensed social peer-to-peer (P2P) payment application, has raised a pre-seed round of US$850,000, led by San Francisco based, Class 5 Global with participation from Samih Toukan’s Jabbar Internet Group, and other prominent angel investors. Ziina allows UAE bank account holders to use their smartphones to send and receive money as easily as sending a text message without IBAN or swift code. The app is available on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store for download.

Ziina is the latest addition to the Middle East’s fintech ecosystem and is capitalizing on the region's rapid adoption of fintech friendly regulation. Ziina’s cofounders, Faisal Toukan, CEO, Sarah Toukan, Chief Product Officer, and Andrew Gold, VP Engineering would like to encourage the adoption of mobile payment solutions in their bid to fast track the UAE’s transition towards a cashless society. They are joined by a strong advisory board including serial entrepreneur, Samih Toukan, and Emre Tok, who previously served as VP of Growth at Careem leading a team of 80 people. The founding team recently launched the start-up’s operations out of Dubai’s In5 Tech with a license issued by TECOM.

Based on user research from its core target demographic, Ziina plans to gradually introduce several value-added services such as QR Code Integration, Prepaid Cards, and Utility Payments, amongst others. In the medium-term, Ziina will integrate different revenue streams. For POS solutions and prepaid cards, Ziina will take a small percentage fee on all transactions from vendors.

During 2021, Ziina plans to launch operations in Saudi Arabia to tap into the vast market potential of the GCC's largest market of 32 million people. Nearly 60 percent of the Kingdom’s population use smartphones with roughly 23 million of the population being active on social media. In the UAE, 8.8 million individuals, making up 91.57 percent of the population, access social media with their mobile devices.