Carrier billing

in the Middle East & North Africa

2015 market report by Fortumo

Photo Author: Rory

Introduction
This market report gives an overview of the carrier billing landscape in 14 countries of the Middle-East and
North African (MENA) region. The countries covered in this report are ones where Fortumo provides direct
carrier billing services: Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi
Arabia, Tunisia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.

This region is very diverse and economic well-being, access to online payments and user spending can differ ten-fold even in neighboring countries.
This market report aims to help digital services merchants understand these differences and fine-tune their content and monetization strategy to
maximize revenue from each market.

Data in this market report has been gathered from public sources and Fortumos internal payments data from our
cross-platform mobile payments solution. In this report, you will find an overview of:

Access to payments: comparison of credit card, debit card, mobile and smartphone penetration
Payment behavior (average revenue per paying user and average transaction sizes) in each market
Devices and languages used by paying users
Design and content considerations that should be accounted for in the MENA region
Overview of the mobile operators & share of prepaid SIM card users in each market
Overview of churn rates and user loyalty

If you have any questions about the data in this report, please reach out to us at bd@fortumo.com.

Andrea Boetti Mattias Liivak

VP of Global Business Development & Sales Head of Marketing & PR
Fortumo Fortumo

Carrier billing in the Middle East & North Africa

Payment access
Lebanon Turkey

11% 33% 64% 34% 33% 43% 90% 50%

Credit Debit Mobile Smart- Credit Debit Mobile Smart-

cards cards phones phones cards cards phones phones

Morocco Israel Iraq

100% 16% 76% 32% 100% 62% 2% 4% 74% 10%

Mobile Smart- Credit Debit Mobile Smart- Credit Debit Mobile Smart-
phones phones cards cards phones phones cards cards phones phones

Jordan Kuwait

2% 19% 100% 18% 26% 70% 100% 57%

Credit Debit Mobile Smart- Credit Debit Mobile Smart-

cards cards phones phones cards cards phones phones

Tunisia Egypt Bahrain Qatar

7% 12% 100% 17% 2% 10% 100% 12% 28% 75% 84% 38% 100% 80%

Credit Debit Mobile Smart- Credit Debit Mobile Smart- Credit Debit Mobile Smart- Mobile Smart-
cards cards phones phones cards cards phones phones cards cards phones phones phones phones

Credit card penetration

Debit card penetration Saudi Arabia United Arab Emirates Oman
Mobile phone penetration
12% 64% 100% 45% 37% 77% 90% 80% 100% 45%
Smartphone penetration
Credit Debit Mobile Smart- Credit Debit Mobile Smart- Mobile Smart-
cards cards phones phones cards cards phones phones phones phones

Carrier billing in the Middle East & North Africa

Payment behaviour
Web payments, March 2015 - August 2015

Average transaction size ($) Monthly ARPPU* ($)

Bahrain 2.4 7.8

Egypt 0.6 1.9

Iraq 1.4 6.5

Israel 4.3 37

Jordan 1.6 6.3

Kuwait 2.9 16.7

Lebanon 2.9 8.6

Morocco 1.6 4.5

Oman 1.9 7

Qatar 2.5 13

Saudi Arabia 2.8 15.8

Tunisia 1.8 3.2

Turkey 2.4 4.3

United Arab Emirates 6 16.9

0 10 20 30 40
* - ARPPU stands for average revenue per paying user, not to be confused with ARPU (average
revenue per user). ARPPU is calculated by dividing the total money spent by users with the
number of unique users who made payments.

Carrier billing in the Middle East & North Africa

Device usage and localization
Web payments, March 2015 - August 2015
Lebanon Turkey
English 49.2% Turkish 85.8%
Arabic 46.1% English 6.1%
other 4.7% Arabic 4.8%
other 3.3%
Morocco Israel
French 81.6% Hebrew 56.2%
English 9.8% Arabic 22.1%
Arabic 4.9% English 11.3% Iraq
other 3.7% other 10.4% Arabic 85.3%
English 12.3%
Jordan other 2.4%
Arabic 57.8%
English 41.3% Kuwait
Tunisia other 0.9% English 67%
French 86.1%
Arabic 31.7%
English 9.4%
other 1.3%
Arabic 3%
other 1.5%
Egypt Bahrain Qatar
English 58% English 58% English 71.6%
Arabic 41% Arabic 37.1% Arabic 19.2%
other 1% other 4.9% other 9.2%
Payment traffic by platform*:

Mobile:
56.3%
Tablet:
13.1%
Desktop:
30.6%
Saudi Arabia
Arabic 80.3%
English 19% United Arab Emirates Oman
other 0.7% English 82.4% Arabic 71.4%
Arabic 15% English 26%
other 2.6% other 2.6%
* - Aggregated across 14 markets; for country-level data, please get in touch with us at bd@fortumo.com.

Carrier billing in the Middle East & North Africa

Carrier proles
Lebanon Turkey Qatar
Prepaid: 82% Prepaid: 53.4% Prepaid: 86%
Touch (53%) Turkcell (52%) Ooredoo (72%)
Prepaid
Alfa (47%) Avea (20%) Vodafone (28%)
Postpaid Vodafone (28%)
Postpaid: 18% Postpaid: 46.6% Postpaid: 14%

Israel Iraq
Prepaid: 98%
Pelephone (37%) Zain (43%)
Morocco Cellcom (29%) Asiacell (35%)
Prepaid: 95% Hutch Orange (27%)
Maroc Telecom (47%) Korek (22%)
MiRS (7%) Postpaid: 2%
Meditel (33%)
INWI (20%) Jordan Kuwait
Postpaid: 5%
Prepaid: 92% Prepaid: 76%
Zain (42%) Zain (41%)
Umniah (33%) Ooredoo (38%)
Orange (25%) VIVA (21%)
Postpaid: 8% Postpaid: 24%

Tunisia Egypt Bahrain

Prepaid: 95% Prepaid: 96.4% Prepaid: 80%
Ooredoo (53%) Vodafone (40%) Batelco (35%)
Tunisie Telecom (34%) Mobinil (36%) Zain (33%)
Orange (13%) Etisalat (24%) VIVA (32%)
Postpaid: 5% Postpaid: 3.6% Postpaid: 20%

Saudi Arabia United Arab Emirates

Prepaid: 86.7% Prepaid: 87%
STC (48%) Etisalat (53%) Oman
Mobily (37%) Du (47%) Prepaid: 93%
Oman Mobile (50%)
Zain (15%)
Postpaid: 13.3% Postpaid: 13% Ooredoo (40%)

Carrier billing in the Middle East & North Africa Fiendi (10%),
Postpaid: 7%
Design and local culture
Arabic is one of the most used languages in the MENA region. Its important to note that Arabic is written
from right to left. Therefore, if you plan to enter the Arabic market, you should review the design of your
service or app and keep in mind that from a design perspective, it is more intuitive for users in the MENA
region to view pages starting from the right, not left.

From the content perspective its best to avoid certain religiously and culturally sensitive topics such as:
Adult content
Depictions of violence
Political or religious views
Drugs and alcohol
Gambling and superstition related services (horoscopes, tarot cards etc.)
Western festivities
Arab gimmicks

Carrier billing in the Middle East & North Africa

Churn and user loyalty*
Web payments, March 2015 - August 2015

Below is an overview of how paying customer loyalty spanned out from March 2015 to
August 2015 for web-based services. 100,000 paying users on the first month is used
as an illustrative number while all of the other data shows real payment behavior of
end-users in the Middle-East.

Churn rate from previous period, Monthly End-user

amount of users remaining ARPPU spend

March 100,000 $10.7 $1,070,000

April 65.9% (34,100) $19.6 $668,360

May 46.8% (18,141) $24.7 $448,083

June 41.1% (10,685) $33.4 $356,879

July 35.2% (6,923) $35.7 $247,151

August 25.2% (5,178) $37.7 $195,022

* - Aggregated across 14 markets; for country-level data, please get in touch with us at bd@fortumo.com.

Carrier billing in the Middle East & North Africa

Additional reading
Carrier billing in India
market report by Fortumo
Read now
How to avoid cannibalization
between online payment methods
white paper by Fortumo
Read now
Carrier billing in Asia:
free market report by Fortumo
Read now
Fortumo allows any merchant to set up payment
processing for web and mobile services, games or
apps. Users with a mobile phone are then able to make
one-click payments using Fortumo without the need for
a credit card: payments are charged to their mobile
operator bill instead. Fortumo supports payments in
more than 90 countries through 350 mobile operators.
Founded in 2007, Fortumo has offices in Estonia, San
Francisco, Beijing, Delhi, Mumbai, Singapore and
London and is backed by Intel Capital and Greycroft
Partners. Get started with mobile payments at
https://fortumo.com.
bd@fortumo.com
https://twitter.com/fortumo
https://facebook.com/fortumo
This document is for informational purposes only. Fortumo and the authors make no expressed or
implied warranties in this document.
Fortumo and the author(s) make no representation or warranty in relation to the accuracy,
completeness or reliability of the information contained in this document. Any opinions expressed in
this document are subject to change without notice. This document may be based on a number of
assumptions and different assumptions could result in materially different results.
This document should not be regarded by recipients as a substitute for obtaining independent advice
and/or the exercise of their own judgement, and is not to be relied upon by recipients. Fortumo and
the authors, and any of their members, directors, employees or agents do not accept any liability for
any loss or damage arising out of the use of all or any part of this document.
Copyright 2015 Fortumo | All rights reserved.