STATEMENT OF PURPOSE

Student Name:- Tirth Ashit Bhayani

Roll No- MS21MM064,
Stream-Global Marketing

1. Proposed Research area and the project title (include details of industry &
region)

 Digital Payments Market in UAE.

 Title of the Project: Growth Strategy for Apple Pay in UAE

Growth of Apple Pay in UAE. How apple pay established its business in UAE.
The pandemic led to a surge in digital payments all around the world. In UAE
itself, there was a rise of 84% in digital payments compared to the start of the
pandemic. Today digital payments comprises of 58% of total transactions, and
apple pay has a market share of more 10% out of the total digital payments. Add
in text citations More and more people are inclined towards apple pay because
of the simplicity and privacy that it provides is not provided by any of its
competitors. The various competitors for apple pay in the digital payments
market are Google Pay, PayPal, and now the upcoming Amazon Pay in UAE.
The usual target audience for apple pay are their existing consumers. Their main
goal is to ease the transactions for the apple users and then expand their system
to other users. (Chan, 2021)

2. What are the broader issues that are to be studied?

Apple pay is divided into 2 parts. One is through the apple credit card which is
provided by the company and it is the first card in the world which is totally
encrypted. The second part of apple pay is it’s digital payments through iPhone
or apple watches. In digital payments, you can just add your existing credit or
debit card in your digital wallet, and then make the payment through your
phone’s security system which can be either face id, touch id, passcode or
password. The main criteria to study this industry is that the digital payment
industry has been developed since past few years only and without taking fees
from the consumers, how apple makes money out of its apple pay model.
(Rumors, n.d.) (Kohli, n.d.)

Objectives of the Study:

 1. To understand the dynamics of digital payment market in UAE and draw
the competitive landscape
2. To analyse the strategies adopted by Apple Pay in UAE
3. To evaluate the factors considered by the users while using digital
payment mode in UAE
4. To recommend Strategy to Apple Pay to grow its business

3. What is the importance and significance of this research? What are the
implications for the chosen company? How will this contribute to the
existing body of knowledge or practice?

Due to technological advancement since the last decade, there has been a rise in
digital payments globally. The pandemic led to boost the use of digital
payments. The people can now make their payments remotely from any part of
the world, without using cash or going to the banks, and at almost extra charges.
The consumers even get a small percent from some of their transactions as a
cash-back, or in the form of reward points. Even after providing all these
services to the consumers at no extra cost, digital payment companies manage
to make money out of their business model. One of the major player in digital
payments is Apple and it handles its payments globally. Learning about the
digital payment industry is one of my major reason why I selected “Growth of
Apple Pay in UAE” as my topic. This will encourage me to learn about the
digital payments and their business models through one of the most valuable
company of the world- Apple.

4. Attach the summary of your initial readings that have influenced your
selection of the research topic / problem. (Industry and Academic).

As per the market study of digital payments, around 82% people in the United
States of America, make use of digital payments. But when we compare to the
retail payments, just 1/3rd of the retail payments are done digitally in UAE. So
when we see the MC Kinsey’s survey of digital payments in the middle east, we
can see that digital payments grew at the rate of 9% every year from 2014-2019,
and the growth rate was just 4-5% in most of the European countries. So middle
east countries have a greater potential and faster growth for digital payments
market, and apple being one of the biggest player in digital payments, it has a
great potential to capture the growing market in UAE.

The government of UAE had planned the shifting of its traditional payment
cycles to digital payments long before the coronavirus resulted. They believed
conversion of payment methods, will result in creation of more high level jobs
and would attract more investments with a transparency for transactions. Their
ambition resulted into double digit growth figures in the last 2 years and today
more than 83% of the population in UAE have their own debit card.

Taking advantage of these figures, Apple pay tied up with most valuable banks
in UAE, so that they can convert more and more customers to use apple pay.
The banks include the Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank,
Emirates NBD, and many more. This will encourage the existing customers of
the bank to use apple pay, which is a much more easier and feasible payment
method, and one of the safest payment method in the world. (Kohli, n.d.)

References:
https://www.khaleejtimes.com/uae/uae-cashless-payments-are-growing-faster-
than-expected-says-top-official

https://support.apple.com/en-ae/HT206637

https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/financial-services/our-insights/the-future-
of-payments-in-the-middle-east

https://ae.visamiddleeast.com/en_AE/pay-with-visa/featured-technologies/
apple-pay.html

5. Status of approval to be completed by the academic mentor (Select as

applicable)

1. Yes, discussed and fully approved.

<Score range 8-10>
2. Yes, discussed and approved with minor changes within the research area.
<Score range 6-8>
3. Discussed with changes in the research area, student to resubmit the SOP.
<Score range 5-6>
4. Incomplete, resubmit

Any other comments:

Academic Mentor Signature & Date: