DUBAI, UAE/PRNewswire/ --  PayTabs, MEASA's award-winning payments powerhouse, today announced that millions of freelancers, artisans, consultants, home based business owners, personal trainers and micro vendors across the United Arab Emirates and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will now be able to receive instant payments over PayTabs social commerce platform, Paymes. 
 
Paymes will serve as PayTabs social commerce platform across the MENA region. Designers, tailors, yoga instructors, tutors, painters, musicians, landscape artists and others will have the opportunity to log into the Paymes platform, set up their digital store front and turn their passionate business ideas into profit, immediately. The entire process, including uploading freelancer documentation, would be facilitated by PayTabs and Paymes within minutes.

According to data from the World Economic Forum and owing to the pandemic, the UAE saw a 197% increase in the recruitment of digital freelancers in 2020. This presents a huge opportunity in terms of engaging these freelancers to make secure payments over social media to benefit their profession.

Commenting on the launch of Paymes in UAE, Neelam Keswani, General Manager PayTabs UAE said: "Paymes helps the merchant to build a cart for the customer and share it in the same mode they're communicating with them be it WhatsApp, Instagram, or other social media. This helps the merchant close the deal quicker instead of redirecting them to a website. During the pandemic we witnessed a surge in micro-businesses and freelancers like artisans, photographers, fitness trainers and home bakers. Paymes is empowering these merchants to accept payments in minutes with minimum documents. Being an entrepreneur, I am happy to be part of this impactful technology which will enable the gig economy to grow and value add to the UAE economy."

With the Paymes platform, GCC's gig economy will benefit from being able to turn their talent and creativity into payments instantly by sharing a secure payment link over nine different social media platforms including Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram. They can also accept contactless payments by generating a static QR code - the safest way to get paid online or instore. Paymes also allows users to set up a mini ecommerce webstore – known as 'Paymes shop'. The web store can be customized and branded saving additional costs for merchants who would otherwise pay to have their websites designed and developed via professional agencies.

According to Arab News, the freelance workforce growth is accelerating in Saudi Arabia as the number of local freelance workers almost doubled in the first half of 2021, with the economy showing more signs of recovery from the pandemic. According to the Saudi Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development, most freelancers are aged between 20 and 30 years old, with most of them working in graphic design, marketing and advertising, and family businesses, such as designing jewelry and providing coffee, in addition to real estate services and handicrafts. Against this business environment, Mohammed Alsaud, General Manager for PayTabs KSA added: "Paymes is a more than wonderful platform for all merchants to benefit from increasing income, expanding and collecting payments from their customers quickly and effectively. This solution will move all merchants to the next stage of their ecommerce trade by helping them to reduce the cost compared to competitors in the local market."

Paymes Co-Founder Hasan Jabbarov said: "In the ecommerce space, while entrepreneurs and businesses find it a challenge to navigate the high costs of setting up their own websites, solutions such as Paymes offer micro businesses multiple advantages. By enabling freelancers and micro businesses, to set up their own digital shop window, online shoppers can add their favorite products from the webstore to their cart, complete their delivery details and check out securely. This is the level of convenience that the Paymes platform and mobile apps brings to business."

In addition to Turkey and Azerbaijan, Paymes which has 850,000 users globally is also available for use and download in PayTabs key African market, Egypt.

About PayTabs
PayTabs is an award-winning payments solutions powerhouse founded by Saudi entrepreneur Abdulaziz Al Jouf.

Having processed the first live payment gateway transaction in June 2014, today PayTabs processes transactions in multiple currencies and markets, swiftly and securely. Using API plugins, PayTabs facilitates seamless e-commerce, m-commerce, and social commerce solutions for merchants and super merchants to 'plug and play' payment features on to their websites.

Originally backed by Saudi Aramco's "Waed" and later by private Saudi investment, over the years, PayTabs has in-built and exported a full stack of game changing solutions. These include mobile applications, hospitality, governmental, education, airline, travel, transport, and biller solutions, to interlink the multi-billion-dollar enterprise market chain in the MENA region.

In 2021, PayTabs launched PT Touch, the first soft POS solution in the MENA market to transform smart phones into merchant point of sale (POS) terminals. In 2022, PayTabs made a leapfrog move to pioneer next generation payments, by launching its home owned, globally validated unified payments and next generation transaction processing platform -PayTabs SwitchOn®.

A proven game changer in the global payments space, PayTabs has dedicated offices in the GCC including the UAE & Saudi Arabia and presence in many other locales including Turkey, India, and Egypt. The company is an equal opportunities employer with a diverse and multi-cultural team comprising of over 20 nationalities.