tap-to-phone
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Mohammad Aleban’s three-year bet on a simple tap
Before Nearpay could make accepting a payment look easy, Mohammad Aleban had to finance years of difficult work. The Riyadh founder is now taking that Saudi-built technology into new markets, one approval and partnership at a time.
Nearpay
Nearpay is a Riyadh-based fintech that turns any NFC-equipped smartphone into a payment terminal. Its payment-infrastructure-as-a-service platform gives banks, payment providers and developers a certified SoftPOS (tap-to-phone) SDK plus the full stack behind it - acceptance, compliance, certification, reconciliation and merchant dashboards - so businesses can accept in-person card payments in about 30 minutes without dedicated hardware. Founded in 2020, Nearpay was one of the first companies certified under Visa's tap-to-phone program, processed more than 40 million transactions in 2024, and in 2025 became the first Saudi payments fintech to expand into the United States.