Success Stories

Expanding from payments to a modern banking offer

Baghdad, Iraq

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At a Glance

• 100,000 transactions daily

• Response times decreased by 50%

• Faster customer onboarding

• 1.2 million app downloads since launch

Launched in 2016 Zain Cash is a mobile wallet business licensed in Iraq, growing 150% Year-on-year.

The mobile wallet product supports both SMEs and consumers to have easy and convenient access to payment, such as collections and payroll services; money transfer services nationally and internationally as well as bill payment, with more than 10,000 agents across the country providing deposit and withdrawal services.

Zain Cash has rapidly expanded, achieving over 1.2 million app downloads.

Yazen Altimimi, CEO, Zain Cash, explains: “ZainCash attract customers with effortless onboarding and innovative and accessible payment solutions designed for everyday convenience.”

Zain Cash has a network of agents across Iraq, which could be a mobile phone shop, local store, or a gas station. Agents are both cash-in and cash-out locations as well as a registration location, which has the potential to improve and increase banking accessibility and ease.

Building a new future

Innovation for Zain Cash is about leveraging technologies to provide better customer experiences. This is in evidence in their product, which utilizes face ID and iris identification, incorporating AI to improve the customer experience and enhance security.

This appetite for innovation has become more important than ever. While Zain Cash’s only product is currently a mobile wallet, the organization’s vision and ambitions are expanding, with hopes to become a digital bank in the near future. That opportunity also presents a number of challenges. Iraq’s banking sector is very regulated and complex. It is also a very competitive industry. There are 70 banks in Iraq, and more standalone providers of wallets and payment solutions. Against this backdrop is an increasingly sophisticated consumer. Yazen explains: “Iraqis are not the consumer of five or ten years ago. They are now very tech-savvy, and mobile first. As a result, they’re expecting the same level of digital services they could find in more developed countries.”

To deliver this future, Zain Cash deployed Temenos core and Temenos Payments Hub (TPH) in March 2024 with Prema Consulting as the implementation partner. This transition included migrating data and balances from 700,000 wallets.

Yazen says: “In March, we relaunched all our tech stack, so the Temenos core banking platform connected to the middleware TIBCO. We were the first to perform this connection. It was a rebirth for Zain Cash.”

Another area Zain Cash wants to focus on innovating is compliance, risk, financial crime and management of AML all from within the Temenos platform. 

Scaling ethically

Before moving to Temenos and TPH, Zain Cash had a mobile wallet solution, but did not feel it fulfilled their vision and plan for the future.

We wanted to scale very quickly. Zain Cash was already processing over 100,000 wallet transactions a day. Regulation in the country and consumer behaviour are both changing. We wanted a system that is agile so we can introduce new products easily and scale quickly.”

Yazen Altimimi, Chief Executive Officer at Zain Cash

Scalability in terms of product development has been matched by the ability to onboard more customers. “With our legacy system, we were very limited in adding new customers. The more we added, the heavier the system became, which compromised performance. Now with Temenos we don’t have that friction. And because we can easily scale, we are able to push our marketing campaigns to drive new sign-ups and improve retention.”

For Zain Cash, growing at scale is also about growing sustainably. And according to Yazen, Temenos is helping them to achieve that too. “We wanted a system that is reliable and sustainable for the future. We have plans to focus on introducing lending products, and that’s something that Temenos does very well. Moving to Temenos means it’s very easy for us to introduce new products very quickly, whether for today or for five years from now.”

While growing at scale and at speed, Zain Cash has implemented ESG principles from the start, especially around its environmental impact.

Improving efficiency and reliability

Zain Cash has seen improvements in operational efficiency and reliability since making the move to Temenos, and positive customer feedback has given them more confidence to increase marketing and product development.

Yazen says: “When we launched with Temenos, we were impressed by the operational efficiency that we were able to unlock. We found that work was much more seamless and reliable. There has been no interruption to our daily payment volume of 100,000 transactions, onboarding customers is now faster, and the response times have improved by 50%. We’re also seeing great feedback from the consumers who use our product.”

According to Yazen, Zain Cash intends to keep the momentum going.

Looking to the future

Yazen concludes: “Temenos is quicker, more reliable, scalable, agile, and empowers innovation. And there’s still a lot to learn. It’s just the beginning of our journey with this partnership. We depend a lot on Temenos already, and we’re keen to learn more about Temenos models and how we can leverage them in the future. We have big visions for the future and achieving it will only be possible with Temenos.”

“As a leader of Zain Cash for the past eight years, and as someone that has been operating in the financial service sector in Iraq, which is such a challenging market, I believe Temenos is the best product for anyone who has a vision to provide modern financial services, whether in Iraq, in the region, or across the world.”

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