In March 2021, following new minimum wage legislation, Qatar became a regional leader, promoting financial inclusion that targets low-income workers whose salaries are pegged at QR1,000 ($275USD) each month.
The Covid-19 pandemic has stirred up new challenges against the implementation of the legislation on Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Following these challenges, Financial Technology (FinTech) appears to be a great option to propel Qatar’s initiative and vision of financial inclusion forward.
Over the last decade, Qatar has made the improvement of life and the protection of the human rights of low-wage earners in the nation a priority to which they are fully committed. Several human rights legislation and the 2015 Wage Protection System (WPS) have gone a long way to improve the standard of living for numerous low-wage earners, hence, low-wage earners numbering hundreds of thousands are well protected from all manner of financial exploitation.
The law has made it mandatory that all employees are paid in full and on time by their parent company; this law covers big, small, government-owned, and non-government-owned companies. It ensures that workers are always able to provide financial support for themselves and their dependents within the country and elsewhere.
There have been several challenges to implementing these laws, with the SME sector bearing more of these challenges. This is a result of the fact that most SMEs are deep into core operations and lack technological know-how. The issues have been exacerbated following the global and regional challenges stirred up by the COVID-19 pandemic which has led to most SMEs fighting to stay afloat in the post-COVID-19 market.
About 96% of the nation’s private enterprises are SMEs and they contribute significantly to the nation’s GDP. They are also great employers of labour, employing hundreds of thousands of people within the nation. A good number of their employees are paid low wages and are either unbanked, underbanked, or financially underserved. This scenario makes these employees vulnerable to exploitation seeing as they are not incorporated into the financial ecosystem with most of their financial dealings in cash and non-digitized payment systems.
SMEs may find it difficult to build and maintain a business when the government expects full compliance with the regulations. This would be even more challenging without the latest financial technology (FinTech) in place to make the mandatory processes easy for SME owners and operators and reduce all disruption and cost to the barest minimum.
Since the institution of the WPS legislation in2015, QPAY International LLC (QPAY) has been able to make compliance with the Qatari government legislations easy for over 15,000 SMEs. They have been able to make all legislation related to documenting employees’ salaries, maintaining minimum wage, and safeguarding the human rights of over 250,000 low-income immigrant workers in Qatar easy.
QPAY is a company owned by a local Qatari family. It has grown exponentially to become the largest FinTech in Qatar and it owes its success to its strong commitment to the SME sector. QPAY provides low cost, easy to use, high quality, and very secure services and solutions to SMEs. Here’s an example: an SME can process and pay employees’ salaries in a matter of seconds using QPAY’s “Payroll Lite©” mobile FinTech solution. This helps the SME to ensure that all worker’s salaries are paid as and when due ensuring that the businesses comply fully with the rules and regulations of the Qatari Government Wage protection system. All of these can be achieved using a mobile phone and it offers alternative languages like Hindi, which is popular with migrant workers.
QPAy also offers some other SME related services like electronic commerce (e-commerce) which is designed to help SMEs market their products and services and also be able to receive secure payments online; Their Point of Sale (POS) solution is designed to help SMEs accept debit and credit card payment in all their stores and locations. Besides the above, QPAY also provides electronic billing (e-billing) which allows SMEs to send quick bills and invoices through their mobile phones. All services offered by QPAY are mobile-friendly, allowing multiple languages including English, Arabic, Malayan, Hindi, etc. Their services only take low fees, thereby empowering SMEs to meet their usually tight budgets.
With the minimum wage regulations poised to kick in from March 2021, SMEs would be well-served if they take strategic decisions that would help them adhere to the new landscape. This would mean the adoption of technology that would keep them on the same growth trajectory while helping ensure financial inclusion for their employees. Such FinTech solutions as the ones provided by QPAY will help to ensure that previously under-banked or financially under-serviced employees will be enabled to manage their finances better and become a part of Qatar’s burgeoning financial ecosystem. With financial inclusion, income growth and productivity would be encouraged while price volatility and income inequality would be reduced in the country.
