PayMate and Sohar International Partner to Digitize B2B Payments in Oman

Sohar International, one of Oman’s banks, has formed a strategic partnership with PayMate India, a B2B payments and solutions provider.

The collaboration aims to digitize, automate and streamline B2B payments in Oman using bank-issued corporate credit cards, the companies said in a Tuesday (Aug. 29) press release.

By leveraging PayMate’s proprietary B2B payment automation solutions, Sohar International can now offer its corporate and small- to medium-sized business (SMB) clients the ability to use bank-issued Visa corporate credit cards for supplier payouts, according to the release.

This solution allows clients to maximize their assigned credit limits, enabling them to make supplier payments before the due dates without depleting their cash reserves, the release said. Additionally, clients can extend their days’ payables outstanding and use the money for strategic business growth.

Khalil Salim Al Hedaifi, chief government and private banking officer at Sohar International, said in the release that there is an opportunity to digitize payments in Oman through cards and emphasized the bank’s commitment to introducing platforms that can use its corporate credit card offering.

The collaboration between Sohar International and PayMate aims to facilitate the seamless settlement of corporate card payments directly into suppliers’ bank accounts, according to the release. The partnership provides reports, reconciliation and visibility into cash flows.

The PayMate platform also offers full control with configurable approval workflows and application programming interfaces (APIs) for enterprise resource planning (ERP) integration with existing legacy systems, the release said.

Payments can be made on an ad hoc basis or through a bulk upload option, making the process efficient and flexible, per the release. The platform’s link-based collections feature simplifies payment collections from retailers, distributors and suppliers, with corporate credit cards as a payment instrument option.

Rakesh Khanna, chief commercial officer at PayMate, said in the release that the partnership will empower local business chief financial officers (CFOs) and finance managers to improve their overall working capital and efficiencies in their payables and receivables process, providing better cash flow visibility.

The partnership comes about two months after PayMate announced that it had extended the footprint of its B2B payments and services beyond India and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) into Central Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Asia Pacific region. Khanna said at the time that these markets make up a $68 trillion B2B payments market.

It also comes as Oman is pursuing a target date of 2040 to achieve its development goals, including those related to digital transformation. The country’s nascent FinTech scene has a huge untapped potential, PYMNTS reported in July 2022.

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