Benefit, a leading Bahraini company providing fintech and electronic financial transactions services, has reported a net profit of BD1.4 million for the year ended December 31, 2020 attributable to the equity shareholders of the group, down more than 50 per cent over the previous year's figures of BD3.3 million ($8.7 million).

 

Total net assets as of December 31, 2020 stood at BD21.9 million compred to BD22.3 million, said the company after its annual general meeting yesterday. 

 

In addition to the company’s financial performance, Benefit witnessed accelerated growth of electronic payments due to the National Wallet (BenefitPay) with 50 million transactions at a value of over BD2.3 billion, representing 793% growth in volumes and over 545% in values. Growth was also experienced in POS and E-Commerce services at 40% and 84% respectively. 

 

Furthermore, the Electronic Funds Transfer System (EFTS) transactions experienced significant growth in 2020 with over 47 million transactions recorded in Fawri+ service in comparison to 6.3 million transactions in 2019, which is a growth of 652%. 

 

Around 8.7 million transactions were carried out on Fawri with a growth rate of 23% as compared to 2019. Fawateer service has noticed a substantial growth in 2020 as well, with 4.19 million transactions representing a 111% growth rate compared to 2019. 

 

During 2020, BenefitPay was the focus of the Benefit strategy and roadmap through the implementation and launch of new features within the application. 

 

Additionally, the company had introduced new application features including split payment, request to pay, UI/UX enhancements for better customer experience, account balance information, the enablement of remittance and car parking counter payment, all of which helped increase the penetration of electronic payments in cash-based sectors during the Covid19 situation.

 

Chairman Mohamed Ebrahim Albastaki said: "Benefit recorded landmark achievements in 2020. Major initiatives included the launch of the national tokenization service in collaboration with CBB and banks, which enables mobile contactless payments (NFC), empowering access by allowing the eKYC shared platform to cater for digital onboarding, and the launch of fuel payments through BenefitPay, which has truly transformed a cash centric segment into one which is electronic and innovative."