Mastercard (MA) Partners to Help Unbanked Individuals in the UAE

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Mastercard Incorporated MA recently collaborated with the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) financial super app, Jingle Pay. By virtue of the partnership, Jingle Pay can enjoy a widespread reach of more than 90 million merchants worldwide forming a part of the Mastercard network.

Mastercard will back Jingle Pay in rolling out physical and virtual cards to help UAE residents engage in hassle-free daily transactions. There is no compulsion to hold a bank account for availing these cards.

Thereby, the latest partnership seems to be of great use to natives of the UAE as they can now use Jingle Pay to conduct secure and seamless digital payments across a global network, rather than merely using the app for engaging in worldwide remittances.

The recent move reinforces Mastercard’s sincere efforts to solidify its footprint as a leading technology provider of innovative and secure payment solutions across the UAE. MA tends to leverage its innovative digital capabilities in capturing the promising growth prospects of the country.

Per the Mastercard New Payments Index, over 66% of UAE users increased the usage of a minimum of one digital payment method in 2021.  The UAE continues to witness a flourishing digital economy, attributable to increased Internet usage, the presence of a significant young population and higher usage of smartphones.

A booming digital economy might have prompted Mastercard to resort to continuous collaborations with an eye on occupying a major share of the digital payments market of the UAE. Thereby, MA has frequently taken the help of fintech to complement its endeavor.

Also, Jingle Pay, the app integrated with advanced features, caters to unbanked communities throughout the UAE. As a result, Mastercard seems to be prudent to pick Jingle Pay as its partner since both share the common endeavor of bringing underserved communities within the digital economy, which has no signs of slowing down. Roughly 1.7 million people continue to be unbanked in the UAE, per the UAE Federal Competitiveness and Statistics Authority. This further substantiates the timeliness of the latest alliance.

Shares of Mastercard have gained 12% in a year against the industry’s decline of 9.6%.

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Zacks Rank & Key Picks

Mastercard currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).  Some better-ranked stocks in the Business Services space are ExlService Holdings, Inc. EXLS, Bowman Consulting Group Ltd. BWMN and Gartner, Inc. IT. While Bowman Consulting Group sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), ExlService and Gartner carry a Zacks Rank of 2 (Buy) at present. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

The bottom line of ExlService outpaced estimates in each of the last four quarters, the average being 9.10%. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for EXLS’s 2022 earnings suggests an improvement of 22.8% from the year-ago reported figure. The same for revenues suggests growth of 24.6% from the year-ago reported number. The consensus mark for EXLS’s 2022 earnings has moved 0.5% north in the past 30 days.

Bowman Consulting Group’s earnings outpaced estimates in three of the trailing four quarters and missed the mark once, the average being 185.58%. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for BWMN’s 2022 earnings is pegged at 50 cents per share, indicating nearly 17-fold increase from the prior-year reported figure. The same for revenues suggests growth of 70.2% from the prior-year reading. The consensus mark for BWMN’s 2022 earnings has moved 42.9% north in the past 30 days.

The bottom line of Gartner outpaced estimates in each of the last four quarters, the average being 27.07%. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for IT’s 2022 earnings suggests an improvement of 6.5% from the year-ago reported figure. The same for revenues suggests growth of 14.6% from the year-ago actuals. The consensus mark for IT’s 2022 earnings has moved 8.4% north in the past 30 days.

Shares of ExlService, Bowman Consulting Group and Gartner have gained 41.2%, 16.4%, and 10.9%, respectively, in a year.

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