Bank Alfalah launches ‘Alfa Business’ to facilitate merchants

KARACHI: Bank Alfalah has introduced a new service under its digital banking portfolio called “Alfa Business App”, a statement said on Tuesday.

In the prevailing circumstances, many businesses are shifting their operations towards digital platforms, and Alfa Business is aimed at facilitating small and medium enterprises to carry out their everyday transactions digitally, it added.

The Alfa Business will support business operators through a range of useful features. To further facilitate the merchants, the registration process for Alfa Business has also been simplified.

Alfa Business can be downloaded from the Google Play Store and users simply require a valid computerised national identity card (CNIC) to sign up in compliance with all the regulations, the statement said.

The merchants will be granted an initial monthly transaction limit of Rs500,000 simply by completing the registration process, it said, adding that the merchants can generate dynamic QR codes to receive payments from their customers.

At a time when social distancing is being encouraged, reducing dependency on cash transactions is an effective solution. The application is also enabled to accept the payments from 17 different banking and payment applications, allowing the businesses to operate seamlessly.

Selling products is also easier with Alfa Business because the application offers the facility to create an e-shop for the merchants with an in-built inventory management facility, as well, it said.

Under the prevailing circumstances, having such an application offers an effective solution to ensure the continuity of the businesses and also to retain greater control over operations.

The operators can obtain real-time transaction reports and view their activity via a dashboard within the app, as well. This improves transparency and allows businesses to have complete visibility over their financial affairs, it said, adding that all of these measures have been taken to provide small and medium business operators with a holistic solution to cater to all their business needs.

The businesses can also avail financing at the lowest markup in the industry from within the application against up to 70 per cent of their transactional volume. This is an automatic credit line generated based on the merchants throughput from the app.

Further, the bank will be processing such requests through an automated system to ensure that no operator faces any inconvenience or delay and the loan amount is disbursed within two hours of the request, it added.

Bank Alfalah Digital Banking group head Yahya Khan said, “Bank Alfalah had always been at the forefront of innovation. With the launch of Alfa Business, we have revolutionised payment acceptance for [the] merchants across Pakistan.”

“From a kiryana store to a supermarket, a merchant can simply self-register and start accepting QR payments. This is especially crucial during the current Covid-19 when digital payments are no more an option, but a necessity to minimise the spread of the virus through the currency notes,” he added.

“Moreover, financing solutions provided through Alfa Business will further help the businesses fulfil their liquidity needs and sustain their businesses in these trying times.”

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