Nilson Report, a credible source of news and analysis of the global card and mobile payment industries, has ranked seven Iranian payment service providers among the World Leading Merchant Acquirers in 2021.
Saman E-Pay topped the list of Middle East and Africa's largest acquirers in terms of the number of transactions. The company processed more than 7.7 billion transactions in 2021 emerging as the world's 13th largest, according to Nilson Report. SEP climbed two places compared to 2020.
Behpardakht Mellat was 14th on the list with over 7.6 billion transactions down three notches since 2020 when it ranked 11.
Parsian E-Commerce Company, an affiliate of Parsian Bank, was 16th while it occupied the 17th slot last year.
Asan Pardakht Persian came in 26th with over 3.8 billion transactions. Iran Kish Credit Card Company took the 28th spot – improving slightly from last year’s 30th position in the Nilson Report.
Pasargad Electronic Payment, affiliated to Bank Pasargad Iran, retained its 36th position with more than 2.5 billion transactions. Payment services provided by Bank Melli, the nation’s biggest state lender through Sadad Informatics, was ranked 48th, with 1.49 billion transactions.
All Iranian PSPs handle only domestic-market Shaparak network card transactions.
The Iran-based acquirers collectively processed 33.70 billion purchase (debit) card transactions last year. Transactions increased 21.3% and purchase volume was up 43.8%.
"The largest merchant acquirers in the Middle East and Africa are in Iran, where neither Visa nor Mastercard cards are issued or acquired…There were seven acquirers in Iran that processed more card payments than the largest Visa and Mastercard acquirer in the MEA region," the report said.
As per the regional version of the report, 36 largest merchant acquirers in the Middle East and Africa region based on the number of Visa and Mastercard purchase transactions collectively processed $221.55 billion in purchase volume from 5.09 billion Visa and Mastercard transactions.
Those acquirers also processed 27.5 million American Express, Diners Club, JCB and UnionPay purchase transactions valued at $3 billion.
Domestic-only brands included Verve in Nigeria, eBucks and Petro Card in South Africa, Al-Amil and KNet in Kuwait, eCash in Qatar, AutoBranch in Kenya, Mada in Saudi Arabia, MCB Fleetman in Mauritius, PayPak in Pakistan, Mercury in United Arab Emirates and CMI in Morocco. Purchase transactions for all domestic-only brands grew 54.4% in 2021 and purchase volume climbed 36.9%.
Global Ranking
The 150 largest acquirers of general purpose credit, debit and prepaid card payments from merchants worldwide were listed based on transactions processed in 2021. Total transactions of 416.55 billion processed by this group increased 17.9% from 2020.
Ten largest acquirers collectively processed 222.01 billion transactions. They accounted for 53.3% of all transactions handled by the listed 150. FIS (Worldpay) remained in 1st place worldwide. Italy-based Nexi moved into 6th place from 31st owing to its acquisition of the merchant acquiring assets of Denmark-based Nets.
JPMorgan Chase’s market share among the top 150 dipped to 9.7% from 10.1%. Russiabased Sberbank’s share grew to 9.1% from 8.6% and Fiserv increased to 6.6% from 6.3%.
New to the top 150 were Abu Dhabi Commercial (UAE), Bancard (Paraguay), Banco Nacional (Costa Rica), BankCard Services (US), Commercial Bank of California (US) and Kuwait Finance House (Kuwait).
