Dubai, UAE, 15 August 2023: Malabar Gold & Diamonds, the sixth largest jewelry retailer in the world with an extensive retail network in eleven countries, has partnered with Emirates NBD, a leading banking group in the MENAT (Middle East, North Africa and Türkiye) region, to automate vendor payments through the use of ‘Emirates NBD API Banking’.

 

Malabar Gold & Diamonds’ strategic partnership with Emirates NBD has supported the acceleration of its digital transformation strategy while ensuring the highest level of data integrity and security standards. Seamless vendor payments and reconciliation have been among the biggest cash management challenges faced by businesses today and the best solutions have been found in transformative technologies such as Application Programming Interface (APIs). Leveraging bespoke solutions, Emirates NBD has been working closely with the jewelry brand and other clients to streamline and optimize treasury operations.

 

Using Emirates NBD’s financial APIs, the bank has created an omnichannel vendor management system for Malabar Gold & Diamonds, offering real time transaction processing and status enquiry for all its suppliers. The introduction of Emirates NBD’s APIs has enhanced the efficiency of the brand’s payment process, reducing the overall turnaround time for payments and eliminating the need for time consuming account reconciliation operations. The partnership marks Emirates NBD’s first collaboration with a global jewelry client, creating a best practice payment benchmark for other members of the precious metal industry to adopt.   

 

Shamlal Ahamed, the International Operations Managing Director of Malabar Gold and Diamonds, said: “Malabar Gold & Diamonds is proud to be the first in our industry to partner with Emirates NBD to implement its state-of-the-art API banking solution. This is in line with our brand’s constant effort to seamlessly blend the latest technological innovations into our operations, thereby improving security and efficiency. We are constantly seeking to improve the efficiency of payments to our associates, who are one of the most important arms of our operations and with Emirates NBD’s new API based payment interface, we are confident of bringing another layer of seamless efficiency into our vendor payments. This will undoubtedly be another milestone in the long-standing association between Malabar Gold & Diamonds and Emirates NBD.”  

 

Commenting on the announcement, Ahmed Al Qassim, Group Head of Wholesale Banking, Emirates NBD, said: “Through our strategic partnership with Malabar Gold & Diamonds, we are proud to have engineered and delivered an advanced payment solution, powered by Emirates NBD API Banking. The bespoke solution showcases our ability to transform traditional business models through the seamless integration of technology and finance. Our APIs are enabling convenient processing of payments across jurisdictions, empowering organizations to digitalize and expedite their B2B payments and transactions, while accessing real time cash visibility and optimized working capital. As we guide our clients through the evolving business landscape, we remain committed to driving innovation and delivering tailored solutions that optimize efficiency, enhance financial visibility and empower their growth aspirations. 

 

Emirates NBD has been accelerating its introduction of a broad range of digital banking solutions across Cash, Liquidity, Trade and Supply Chain Finance as part of its digital transformation strategy. ‘Emirates NBD API Souq’ was launched last year to provide the Group’s corporate clients, FinTechs and developers an all-in-one ecosystem to rapidly develop innovative financial solutions. It currently hosts more than 30 banking APIs, across the six key categories of account services, payments, collections, real-time notifications, trade services and information services.