On 5 August 2026 Mastercard and Arab Financial Services (AFS) launched AFS Pro in the UAE — a unified mobile B2B platform that combines corporate card issuance, SoftPOS contactless acceptance on a smartphone and Pay-by-Link for e-commerce. The UAE goes first, Egypt follows. We break down what the bundle means for corporates and SMEs in the Emirates and how it fits the wider 2026 shift in corporate payments.
What was launched
Mastercard and Arab Financial Services — a regional processing provider headquartered in Bahrain — brought AFS Pro to the UAE market. It is a mobile B2B platform that combines two traditionally separated corporate banking jobs in a single interface: managing a company's expenses and accepting payments from its customers.
Functionally, AFS Pro covers Mastercard-branded corporate credit and prepaid card issuance, spending limits and rules, and real-time transaction monitoring. It also bundles acceptance tools: SoftPOS technology that turns an employee's smartphone into a contactless POS terminal, and Pay-by-Link for remote and e-commerce transactions. The UAE is the first launch market, Egypt is next.
Why UAE businesses should care
The key difference between AFS Pro and a standard corporate card programme is a single environment. A typical SME in the UAE gets corporate cards from its bank, a POS terminal from an acquirer and payment links for its website from a payment gateway. Each service means a separate statement, portal and contract. AFS Pro brings these three jobs into one screen. The finance director or accountant sees both outgoing money (what staff spend on cards) and incoming money (what customers pay via SoftPOS or Pay-by-Link) in one dashboard — no switching between services.
The second gain is real-time control. Budget owners do not wait for next month's statement — they see transactions as they happen. Card limits and rules can be changed from the app, which shifts the working model from «reviewing the past» to «steering the present.» For companies that still need to move on the UAE national payments layer (Jaywan), AFS Pro does not replace the bank account itself, but it lowers the bar for adjacent infrastructure: no need to procure a POS terminal or wire in a payment gateway for the website.
SoftPOS and Pay-by-Link: how they work
SoftPOS (often marketed as Tap-to-Phone) turns an ordinary smartphone into a contactless terminal. The customer taps their card or a phone with Apple Pay/Google Pay against the NFC receiver of the seller's smartphone — the payment goes through. No standalone hardware, no terminal installation, no separate acquiring contract. For courier services, mobile installers, retail without a fixed cash desk and field engineering teams this is a real operating simplification.
Pay-by-Link generates a unique payment link that a company sends to a customer through a messenger, email or SMS. The customer opens the link, enters card details in a secure form, and the money moves to the merchant. The format fits B2B services with custom invoices, consulting engagements and sales without a full e-commerce presence. Both technologies come with AFS Pro out of the box — a company does not need to integrate them separately.
What both sides say
«Our landmark alliance is a major win for businesses in the UAE and Egypt, as it significantly boosts efficiency, visibility and control over corporate spending,» said Dr Samer Soliman, Group CEO of Arab Financial Services.
«We look forward to working closely with AFS to provide businesses with a scalable, digital-first corporate payments solution that delivers meaningful value,» added Mete Guney, Executive Vice President, Market Development, EEMEA, at Mastercard.
A separate layer of the offering targets banks. AFS Pro is packaged as a ready-to-deploy white-label platform: a bank can offer it to its business clients as a bundled «cards + acceptance» package without developing an in-house system from scratch. This shortens time-to-market for banks that do not have the resources to build such a platform themselves.
Where the launch fits
AFS Pro is not an isolated event — it is a logical piece of a systemic shift in the UAE corporate payments market in 2026. In six months this is already the fourth major release in the B2B-cards and corporate payments segment. In May First Abu Dhabi Bank and Mastercard launched a multi-tiered SME Commercial Cards Suite with mobile-first virtual cards. In June HSBC × Mastercard added virtual commercial cards for UAE companies. In late July the Central Bank of the UAE granted KamelPay full operating licences (SVF+RPS) for B2B payroll and corporate payments. In early August Dubai Founders HQ, Mastercard and Pemo rolled out Founder Finance for startups and SMEs.
The direction is clear: the market is moving from a classic «bank + separate acquirer + separate gateway» stack to «a unified mobile B2B platform with built-in acceptance.» For UAE businesses this lowers the entry barrier for digital corporate finance — SMEs now reach controls and functionality that only large holdings with in-house fintech stacks used to have two or three years ago. On the reporting side, the parallel UAE e-invoicing rollout is reshaping the compliance layer at the same time — together, the two trends define a new operating environment for B2B companies in the Emirates.
What a UAE company can do now
Three practical lines of action. First — a company planning setup or expansion that has not yet picked a corporate card programme should add AFS Pro to the short-list next to First Abu Dhabi Bank, HSBC and other Mastercard-issuing banks. Pricing tiers, minimum turnover thresholds and the list of partner banks in the UAE were not published at launch — details are best confirmed directly with the issuing bank.
Second — a company that already runs a fragmented stack (cards at one bank, acquirer at another, gateway at a third) should assess what a single platform saves in finance-team hours on reconciliations and control. Often this operating overhead — not fees — is the main argument for migration. Third — a business planning a specific SoftPOS or Pay-by-Link use case (delivery, field services, custom invoices) can close the gap with AFS Pro without a separate integrator.
We will revisit the topic as official AFS Pro conditions and the partner bank list become public in the UAE, and as the next markets — Egypt and other EEMEA countries — go live.
