logo
AFS Partners with Ternoa using Athar to Pioneer Crypto Payments Across GCC

AFS Partners with Ternoa using Athar to Pioneer Crypto Payments Across GCC

Biz Bahrain25-02-2025

Arab Financial Services (AFS), the Middle East and Africa region's leading digital payment solutions provider and fintech enabler, has partnered with Ternoa using Athar, a secure and cost-efficient PayFi network designed to onboard billions of retail customers into crypto.
Ternoa will introduce Athar, a decentralized consumer finance protocol which makes crypto payments easier and more accessible for everyday transactions. AFS will begin deploying Athar-powered crypto payment solutions for merchants in the UAE.
Mr. Samer Soliman, AFS CEO commented: 'AFS is committed to driving innovation in the payments industry and expanding access to seamless, secure, and future-ready solutions. By integrating stablecoins and decentralized finance, we are unlocking new possibilities for merchants and consumers across the UAE, paving the way for the broader adoption of digital payments in the region.'
Ternoa CEO, Mr. Mickael Canu added, 'The next big step for blockchain and digital finance is making it useful in everyday life. The payments and financial services industries are massive and bringing them onto Ethereum will open up exciting new possibilities. Our partnership using Athar with AFS will make digital payments faster, more secure, and accessible.'
Athar will enable stablecoin payments at Point-of-Sales (PoS) terminals, enhancing transaction efficiency and security for businesses and consumers. Unlike traditional cryptocurrencies, stablecoins are designed to maintain a stable value, typically pegged to fiat currencies like the US dollar or UAE dirham.

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

AI Is Taking Thousands Of Jobs; Is Yours At Risk?
AI Is Taking Thousands Of Jobs; Is Yours At Risk?

Gulf Insider

time5 days ago

  • Gulf Insider

AI Is Taking Thousands Of Jobs; Is Yours At Risk?

Just as the internet radically changed how America conducts business, artificial intelligence (AI) is also making waves in the workplace by taking thousands of jobs. It's an outcome that industry experts have warned would happen, and professionals across multiple employment sectors have already been affected. Beyond artists and content creators, AI is also impacting professionals in marketing, technology, translation, various levels of administration, and management. It has been a silent and ongoing trend for two years, but tech insiders say this is just the beginning. A senior software engineer at Microsoft, Nandita Giri, shared her thoughts with The Epoch Times on what kind of near-term changes Americans can expect as a result of ramped-up workplace AI integration. 'AI is particularly effective at replacing routine, predictable tasks … jobs in data entry, customer support, transcription, and logistics are the most vulnerable,' Giri said. 'In software engineering, even some junior [developer] testing roles are being replaced or reshaped with AI-driven tooling. Back-office operations across health care, finance, and legal are also at high risk.' Giri has observed a shift away from human workers in favor of AI in enterprise software development, where she said companies are quietly removing what they call 'coordination overhead.' She said this is happening as AI tools become more reliable for things like task triage, scheduling, and summarization. 'AI agents have enabled a single engineer to manage what used to be a multi-person workflow, especially in automation pipelines and internal support tasks,' she said. Cahyo Subroto, founder of the AI-powered data extraction platform MrScraper, agrees with this perspective. 'I've spent the last few years building systems that automate work, so I've seen firsthand where AI adds value and where it quietly pushes people out of the picture,' Subroto told The Epoch Times. Like Giri, Subroto said that the jobs most in danger of AI replacement are those that rely heavily on structured, repetitive digital labor. 'That includes early-stage analysts, junior QA [quality assurance] testers, data entry staff, and even support roles in HR and customer service,' he said. Subroto explained that when AI can learn workflow patterns, it can perform them faster and without the payroll cost. 'At my last company, I watched a client eliminate three QA positions after switching to a tool that could auto-generate test cases and report bugs in real time.' These decisions are based strictly on efficiency, he added. 'That's what makes this shift so difficult to stop.' In January, the World Economic Forum (WEF) released a report that estimated 92 million jobs would be displaced by AI by 2030. The think tank surveyed more than 1,000 of the world's largest employers, accounting for 22 industry groups and more than 14 million workers. There is a silver lining, however. The WEF—and many others—predict that AI will also create new jobs and reshape existing positions, allowing current employees in various sectors to focus on more high-value tasks instead of routine work. Jobs with declining demand include customer service representatives, claims adjusters, bank tellers, graphic designers, accountants, and auditors, the WEF report said. Subroto believes much of the shift toward AI will be subtle. 'Instead of replacing people, we're restructuring the workflow to rely on AI for the mechanical parts, while humans take on broader accountability.' 'That's a harder conversation because it's not about job loss. It's about job transformation, and not everyone will be equipped and ready to make that jump,' he said. In May, Microsoft announced plans to lay off 3 percent of its employees across the board, affecting roughly 6,000 people. In a statement to CNBC, a spokesperson for the tech giant said, 'We continue to implement organizational changes necessary to best position the company for success in a dynamic marketplace.' The spokesperson confirmed that the job cuts weren't related to worker performance. It's reportedly the largest series of layoffs at Microsoft since 2023. This arrives on the heels of reported cuts at Amazon, which in January said it would lay off what it called a 'small number' of its communications and sustainability employees. It followed that by announcing in March plans to eliminate 14,000 managerial positions by early next year. Among those who lost their job at Microsoft is former senior data scientist Tatiana Teppoeva, founder and CEO of One Nonverbal Ecosystem. She told The Epoch Times that increased tech layoffs alongside the rise of AI integration is an industry red flag. 'This has sparked genuine concerns over the future need for human programmers and signals a real, accelerating shift in how companies evaluate which human roles are essential,' Teppoeva said. Like Giri and Subroto, Teppoeva identified industries that have a lot of unchanging, rules-based tasks like back-end software development, data entry, finance, and logistics as areas with a high probability of AI job replacement. 'The most realistic near-term disruption is task-level automation, not full job replacement,' she said. 'For example, in sales, AI tools can draft outreach emails or analyze deal data, but they cannot replicate the human-to-human trust, nonverbal signals, and presence that close high-ticket deals.' Teppoeva said the human-AI gap is now a point of focus for her business. 'Helping sales teams, executives, and companies align their human communication, body language, voice, [and] nonverbal presence [is] what advanced AI tools still can't do,' she said, then added, 'At least not yet.' On June 2, a Midwest-based web content manager for a major U.S. company—who asked to be identified only as 'Tom'—was laid off with the rest of his department and most of the company's marketing staff. Tom requested the company not be identified out of fear it could affect his severance. Having worked in web development for more than 15 years, Tom said he saw the 'AI blitz' coming and had a gut hunch it would only be a matter of time before he was made redundant. 'The worst part is the lack of honesty,' Tom said. 'Companies aren't being straight with people, they're just saying things like 'sales are down' or 'we need to improve efficiency,' but the reality is it's about increasing profit by any means.' Tom said he has a friend who spent nearly two decades working in marketing and kept up with changing industry trends before being laid off a year ago because of AI integration. 'There are entire careers with university degrees behind them that are ending now,' Tom said. 'It's not necessarily a one-to-one ratio,' he added. 'Maybe an AI tool automates half of a department's workload. That means you can redistribute the remaining work amongst a smaller team.' Since the Hollywood writers' strike in 2023, the potential for AI to disrupt careers has been under a microscope, and it's easy to see why. Out of more than 80,000 jobs cut in May 2023, nearly 4,000 were due to AI, according to a layoffs report from the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray, and Christmas, Inc. The trend continued last year. In 2024, the Society of Authors surveyed 12,500 workers in different creative industries, revealing many had already lost work to AI. According to the survey, 26 percent of illustrators and 36 percent of translators had already lost work because of generative AI. Tesla co-founder Elon Musk also shared his views on AI job replacement during the Viva Technology conference in Paris in 2024, following news that Tesla planned to lay off 10 percent of its workforce. 'If the computer and robot can do everything better than you, what meaning does your life have? … In a negative scenario … we're in deep trouble,' Musk said. Other tech insiders share this point of view. During an episode of 'The Artificial Intelligence' show, Marketing AI Institute founder Paul Roetzer said AI is fundamentally reshaping the human workforce. 'It's not like we're drawing some difficult-to-find conclusion here,' Roetzer said when discussing Microsoft's most recent layoffs. 'If the CTO [chief technology officer] of the company is saying that within five years we expect 95 percent of all code to be written by AI, then what do you need a bunch of engineers for?' Subroto used an example from his work, describing the use of AI for 'task sequencing and code generation,' which allowed his company to launch features faster and fix bugs before users even saw them. However, he said the improved work efficiency came at the cost of no longer needing manual testers checking outputs line by line. 'These were smart, capable people, and yet the structure of the work changed so much that their role no longer made sense,' he said. The current phase-out of human work roles due to increased AI efficiency is nuanced, but some don't think it will stay that way for much longer. A McKinsey Global Institute analysis from July 2023 predicted that 30 percent of total hours worked could be absorbed by generative AI by 2030. Researchers estimated that 11.8 million employees working in sectors with shrinking demand may need to shift into other departments, while roughly 9 million may need to change careers entirely.

Bahrain firm powers UAE launch
Bahrain firm powers UAE launch

Daily Tribune

time03-06-2025

  • Daily Tribune

Bahrain firm powers UAE launch

TDT| Manama Bahrain's fintech leadership is driving digital change in the UAE, with Bahrain-based Arab Financial Services (AFS) powering the launch of a fully app-based credit card solution in collaboration with Mawarid Finance. The new platform lets customers apply, receive, and manage credit cards instantly, without visiting a branch or signing a single form. Bahrain-built, region-ready The end-to-end solution, developed and enabled by AFS, marks a major milestone in the GCC's shift toward mobile-first financial services. Regulated by the Central Bank of Bahrain, AFS is playing a growing regional role in delivering seamless digital finance tools across borders. The app allows users to complete the full credit card journey - from application to approval to daily account management - directly from their smartphones. It eliminates the need for physical paperwork or in-person appointments and offers real-time access to spending data and account controls. Shariah-compliant and secure Mawarid Finance, the UAEbased Islamic finance group, partnered with AFS to design the solution to be both fully Shariah-compliant and aligned with modern security standards. Executives from both companies signed the agreement at a recent ceremony, underscoring their shared commitment to digital innovation. 'This platform reflects our commitment to making secure, efficient, and simple financial access a reality for our customers,' said Rashid Al Qubaisi, CEO of Mawarid Finance. AFS CEO Samer Soliman noted: 'Our partnership with Mawarid proves the strength of Bahrain's fintech sector in enabling advanced digital services across the region. It's a model of how traditional institutions and fintech can work together to deliver scalable, intuitive solutions.' Founded in Bahrain in 1984, AFS has become the region's leading digital payment solutions provider, with operations in Bahrain, Egypt, Oman, and the UAE. The launch with Mawarid adds to a growing list of projects where Bahrain-grown fintech tools are transforming user experience far beyond its borders.

Hedera Africa Hackathon Launches with $1M Prize Pool to Accelerate Africa's Digital Future
Hedera Africa Hackathon Launches with $1M Prize Pool to Accelerate Africa's Digital Future

Biz Bahrain

time27-05-2025

  • Biz Bahrain

Hedera Africa Hackathon Launches with $1M Prize Pool to Accelerate Africa's Digital Future

The Hashgraph Association, a Swiss non-profit organisation driving global adoption of Hedera-powered solutions by funding innovation, training, certification, and venture building programs, in collaboration with Exponential Science Foundation, a not-for-profit foundation accelerating responsible tech adoption, via research, education, and innovation activities, today announces the launch of the Hedera Africa Hackathon 2025 to enable the next generation of Web developers and empower economic inclusion in Africa with a digital future for all. This biggest Web3 Hackathon initiative combines online participation with onsite events in over 20 African cities, with a goal of attracting over 10,000 participants across more than 15 countries on the African continent. Developers, students, and entrepreneurs are invited to collaborate to build decentralized solutions on Hedera across industries such as Finance, Healthcare, Telecoms, Sustainability, Agriculture, and Manufacturing, while leveraging the convergence of other deep technologies such as AI, IoT, Robotics, and Quantum Computing, with a prize pool of more than $1 million on offer for the winning teams and projects. With global participation officially open from August 1 to September 30, 2025, the hackathon tasks applicants to develop blockchain/distributed ledger technology (DLT)-based, scalable solutions tailored to the continent's most urgent challenges and needs. All solutions will be built on the Hedera network – the world's most energy-efficient and cost-effective DLT, which offers cost predictability, the highest levels of security, and the ability to support reliable, scalable, and enterprise-grade applications. Already having secured the backing and participation of more than 50 global and regional partners to be announced over the next few weeks, as well as over 100 universities and tech hubs, the hackathon is designed to be the largest of its kind on the African continent. The event will offer extensive technical education, certification, and hands-on support from Hedera-Certified engineers, with hacking stations to be established in cities such as Lagos, Cairo, Nairobi, Kinshasa, Cape Town, Casablanca, and Tunis for in-person collaboration, alongside a fully virtual Hackathon track accessible worldwide. 'Africa is home to one of the youngest, most enthusiastic and dynamic tech communities in the world; its future will depend on digitization,' said Kamal Youssefi, President of The Hashgraph Association. 'By equipping developers and entrepreneurs with Web3 skills and next generation toolkits, we're not just solving today's problems, we're shaping the future of decentralized innovation in one of the world's most significant growth markets, fostering a digital future for all through financial, identity, and communication inclusion.' The hackathon aims to catalyze continuous innovation across four key tracks: On-Chain Finance and Real-World Asset (RWA) Tokenisation; ESG Sustainability and Traceability; Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) and AI; and Gaming, Metaverse, & NFTs. Developers of all skill levels and backgrounds are encouraged to participate — no prior blockchain experience is required. Extensive training resources will be provided through the Hedera Academy, with access to a thriving developer community. The Hashgraph Association and the Exponential Science Foundation will be carrying out awareness and training campaigns to prepare participants for the hackathon before the official start date on August 1st 2025. 'Initiatives such as the Hedera Africa Hackathon encourage the next generation of tech builders, researchers, and entrepreneurs. As well as driving blockchain education and innovation within a continent that is showing incredible growth potential. We encourage anyone with an interest in blockchain technology to sign up and start developing the next wave of practical solutions across multiple industries to gain valuable experience and a chance to claim the prize pool. Our hope is that participants will go on to launch their own ventures and share their learnings,' said Paolo Tasca, Co-Founder & Executive Chairman of Exponential Science Foundation. The Hedera Africa Hackathon 2025 is operated and supported by a strong network of partners, under the experienced leadership of DAR Blockchain, a Tunisian-based Web3 Hub that has been operating in the Web3 industry since 2017. DAR Blockchain plays a significant role in magnifying the impact of this hackathon initiative across the continent and builds on THA's previous efforts to support blockchain innovation in Africa.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store