Through our focused growth strategy, we are targeting medium-long term delivery of 20%+ revenue growth, with underlying EBITDA margins trending towards 45-50%.
Our ambition is to be the fastest-growing and most innovative customer centric payments company in the Middle East and Africa (MEA).
The MEA is a structurally attractive market for a digital payments provider such as Network. Cash remains dominant across the region, accounting for 81% of total transaction volumes in 2020, with digital payments volumes expected to increase significantly as a result of the structural shift away from cash and towards digital payments. Many of our markets are underpenetrated and are seeing an acceleration in digital payment adoption, particularly post COVID-19. E-commerce is growing rapidly from a low base and expectations are that consumer online payments will grow at a c25% CAGR between 2021-2025. Alternative payments are also attractive, with the value growth in mobile money payments expected to be c20% between 2021-2025. These trends are supported by attractive GDP dynamics; a young, fast-growing population and a large consumer spending pool, particularly in our six focus markets comprising the UAE, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Egypt and Kenya.
We are well positioned to succeed, supported by our strategic initiatives in action and two growth pillars; to accelerate - serve more customers, and; to innovate - serve customers better.
Accelerate - serve more customers
- Faster signup of merchant and financial institution customers
- Grow the merchant base
- Access new revenue pools
Innovate - serve customers better
- Harness the power of partnerships
- Add new revenue streams to every transaction
- Be the e-commerce champion in the region
We are continuing to automate and digitise the process of onboarding our merchant and financial institution customers, which will drive faster signups, lower our costs and enhance the customer experience.
We are lowering the cost of payment acceptance for our merchants in order to expand the potential to accept payments to even more customers. The enhancement of our technology capabilities means our merchant customers can accept payments through an App, without the need for a traditional point-of-sale terminal.
We will access a large, untapped revenue opportunity by entering the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The region offers a dynamic payments landscape, where digital payments penetration is currently only 18% of total payment transactions but seeing fast growth. There are also significant payment processing outsourcing opportunities, as 8 of the 10 largest banks in the region continue to insource their processing operations. We expect our first customer revenues in 2022 and see the region as a cUSD50m revenue opportunity in the medium-long term.
We will form partnerships throughout the region, to support the execution of our strategy and further enrich our capabilities. Through partnerships, we can accelerate innovation, enhance our products and services in key growth areas, as well as lowering our cost of delivery.
We will continue to expand our value-added-services, which deliver more solutions to our customers, further support our long-standing customer relationships and provide additional revenue streams to our business. We are also focused on adapting our services to specific sectors and local markets, ultimately bringing more value and insights to our customers.
Our recent acquisition of DPO Group, the largest e-commerce payments platform operating across Africa, further strengthens our online offering. Network and DPO are natural partners and together, we will provide the widest range of payment acceptance options for merchants across the region, whilst also consolidating our exposure to the fastest growing payments markets. We will leverage DPO’s capabilities such as mobile money payment acceptance, fast digital onboarding and value-added services, to be the leading merchant payment services provider in our regions.
Further growth opportunities
We see the potential for further growth opportunities, beyond our ongoing strategic initiatives in action. These would provide incremental revenue growth beyond our financial guidance, as well as requiring further operational and capital investment. These will focus on:
- New markets
- Winning large Financial Institution and multi-market customers
- Enabling new payment flows across Business to Business (B2B), Person to Person (P2P) or Account to Account (A2A) payments