Bede Kuwait and Ottu Boost Kuwait’s Digital Payment Integration Efforts

Bede Kuwait, the fintech arm of Zain Group, has teamed up with payment orchestration platform Ottu in a move that could quietly reshape how large businesses in Kuwait handle digital payments. The partnership is aimed at helping enterprises simplify their payment operations while pushing the wider adoption of digital wallets, including Bede’s own offering and others in the market.

In practical terms, Bede’s wallet and payment gateway services will now be available across Ottu’s enterprise merchant network in Kuwait. That spans sectors most of us bump into every day – retail, hospitality, education and digital services. Merchants already plugged into Ottu can switch on Bede Wallet through straightforward configuration, with no extra development work. For anyone who’s wrestled with payment integrations before, that’s spot on and a relief, because it can be a bit of a faff.

From the enterprise side, the deal brings access to Ottu’s centralised orchestration layer. This allows businesses to manage multiple payment providers through a single integration, improving resilience and visibility while cutting down operational headaches. And believe it or not, that kind of behind-the-scenes plumbing often makes or breaks the customer experience at checkout.

Ahmad Al Nafisi, General Manager of Bede Kuwait, said the partnership fits neatly with Kuwait’s broader push to modernise its financial infrastructure and encourage cashless transactions. He highlighted Bede’s focus on working with established digital solutions providers to give merchants practical tools that help them grow, while enabling entrepreneurs to manage their businesses securely and with less friction.

On the flip side, Ottu’s Chief Executive Officer Talal Al Awadhi pointed to the need for scalable and flexible infrastructure as digital payment habits evolve in Kuwait. He noted that combining payment orchestration with wallet enablement supports enterprise needs today while nudging the market further towards digital-first payments.

Bede itself only entered the regional fintech scene in 2024, but it’s been moving at a fair clip. The platform now offers e-wallets and payment gateways for individuals and businesses across Kuwait, Bahrain and Sudan, all operating under central bank licences. It’s also big on compliance and security, a detail that matters more than many founders realise – I’ve seen startups learn that lesson the hard way, well… too late.

Ottu, meanwhile, provides an independent layer that sits above payment gateways and wallets, routing transactions based on performance, cost and availability, with automatic failover if one provider goes down. For finance and tech teams, its consolidated dashboards give a clearer view of what’s going on, without juggling multiple systems.

From where I stand, this kind of collaboration feels like a step in the right direction for Kuwait’s fintech ecosystem. It may not grab headlines like flashy funding rounds, but it’s the sort of infrastructure play that helps the whole market mature. And for founders reading Arageek, especially those planning to scale, it’s definately one to keep an eye on.

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