Alshaya Group
Digital payments transformation across one of the world's largest brand franchise operators — spanning H&M, Victoria's Secret, Pottery Barn, Bath & Body Works and Shake Shack across eight Gulf markets.
The challenge
Alshaya operates some of the world's most recognisable retail brands as franchises across the Middle East — thousands of stores, dozens of brands, eight markets, each with its own regulators, acquirers, payment preferences and currencies. Digital commerce was growing fast, but the payments experience hadn't kept pace with the brands' global standards.
The complexity multiplied across every dimension: each brand had its own customer expectations, each market its own payment methods and rules, and every change had to work at the till, online and in-app — without disrupting stores that were trading seven days a week.
Scope — where payments were losing money
Before changing anything, we mapped where the payment experience was actually costing the business: abandoned checkouts, declined transactions, payment methods customers wanted but couldn't use, and the operational cost of running different payment setups brand by brand and market by market.
Shape — one payments strategy, many brands
The answer wasn't a single one-size-fits-all system — it was a common payments foundation flexible enough for each brand and market to serve its own customers. That meant choosing the acquiring and gateway partners, defining which local payment methods mattered in which market, and designing checkout experiences that met each global brand's standards.
Solve — delivery across live retail
Rollout happened against live trading — new payment methods, checkout improvements and digital experiences delivered brand by brand and market by market, sequenced so stores and e-commerce kept running throughout. Every integration had to satisfy the brand owner's global standards and the local market's regulatory requirements at the same time.
Scale — a repeatable playbook
The real value wasn't any single integration — it was the repeatable playbook: how to take a new payment method, wallet or checkout capability and roll it across brands and markets quickly, with the governance to satisfy every stakeholder from brand owner to local regulator.
Transformation at portfolio scale
8
Gulf markets covered by the payments transformation
5+
global brands including H&M, Victoria's Secret, Pottery Barn, Bath & Body Works and Shake Shack
Omnichannel
delivered across in-store, online and in-app
Live
rolled out against seven-day trading without disruption
Building something like this?
Payments transformation, checkout, multi-market rollout — this is the work I do. Tell me what you're facing and I'll tell you honestly whether I can help.
