Omar Soudodi during Mix N'Mentor Dubai in December 2015. (Image via Wamda)

PayFort announced December 15 the release of two new features to help MENA startups overcome online payment challenges.

The Middle Eastern online payment service provider released START, a service which offers startups and SMEs an option that allows them to set up online payment services in just a few hours.

The second solution is ‘The FORT’, a payment gateway that allows enterprises to customize their online payment processes by choosing details such as which banks to work with and preferred anti-fraud software.

“Although large enterprises and SMEs often have very different needs, all businesses want to provide secure, integrated payment options to their clients and they want to implement quickly. PayFort solutions make that easy to do,” PayFort managing director Omar Soudodi said in a statement.

More on PayFort START

START allows startups and small businesses to fast-track their online payment setup and benefit from new online payment applications.

SMEs can set up a START account on the same day, without having to provide a deposit. The new tool provides SMEs with tools and developer friendly APIs (application programming interface) to come up with an online payment process for their customers quickly (normally during the same day).

The tool even provides payment processes for Instagram sellers, allowing them to process customer orders easily via ‘URL payment’.

And The FORT

The FORT allows enterprise customers to manage the whole payment process themselves, from payment options and user experience, through to order processing and bank transactions.

Its dashboard allows merchants to build their own payment stack by choosing options for payment channels, fraud tools, acquiring banks, issuing banks and local payment services, such as e-Dirham, Fawry, NAPS (Direct Debit Qatar) and Sadad. Merchants can also integrate third party services with their payment stack.

“It is secure, scalable, easy to integrate and comes with a powerful dashboard to help enterprises continue to optimise their payment processes and increase conversions” said Soudodi.

The FORT offers merchants a platform to  enhance the user experience by optimizing the payment process for desktop, mobile web and mobile app users. PayFort's Token Service allows merchants to securely save user credit card details for the convenience of repeat customers, whilst a variety of payment options and pay-by-installments service make it easy for merchants to increase conversion ratios.