Mastercard will clear Tamatem Plus payments in the Gulf

Tamatem has put Mastercard Gateway behind Tamatem Plus, its shop for game purchases, in a deal announced around 7 October 2026. The gateway, sold through Mastercard Merchant Cloud, is meant to cover more than 13 markets in the Middle East and Africa. The first two are Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. No go-live date was published for the other eleven. No fee and no payment volume were disclosed. Players on Tamatem Plus already check out on local web stores and inside games. The companies say they will be able to pay with cards, local methods other than cards, and balances on telecom wallets, with identity checks and fraud screens in the background. Tamatem Plus currently runs more than 30 local storefronts and offers more than 50 local payment methods through one connection. Those counts are the company’s. Mastercard, as a direct gateway partner, will add round-the-clock technical support, links to several local and international acquirers, and training. For a publisher, the pitch is a shop the studio controls, rather than a sale that happens only inside an app store. Tamatem is a Jordanian mobile games publisher, founded in 2013 by Hussam Hammo. It has backing from the Abu Dhabi Investment Office and support from Abu Dhabi Gaming. Hammo said payments were the next chapter of building games for the region’s language and culture. Faisal Al Bitar, managing director of Tamatem Plus, has framed the platform as one integration for many local methods. Mete Güney, Mastercard’s executive vice president for market development in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa, called gaming one of the fastest-growing habits in the region and pointed to convenience at checkout. None of the three put a number on transactions. The regional market figure attached to the news comes from a separate report, not from this contract. GamesBeat cited a MENA gaming market of about 7.1 billion dollars in 2025, up 7.5 percent on the year. That is a market size. It is not Tamatem’s revenue, and it is not the value of payments that will pass through Mastercard Gateway. A publisher that localises a game still has to clear a payment that a Saudi or Emirati player will actually complete. Telecom wallets and local methods exist because cards alone do not cover the base. A player who tops up a phone and spends that balance is not the same buyer as a player with a credit card. For a studio in Amman or Riyadh, the useful line is who sits between the player and the money. An app-store sale takes a cut and sets the rules. A web store on Tamatem Plus, with Mastercard processing, is an attempt to keep the relationship and still clear the payment. That only works if the gateway is live in the country where the player is, and if the local method the player uses is one of the 50. Africa is in the headline. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are the start. A reader in Lagos or Nairobi should not treat this as a switch already thrown. The same caution applies in Cairo and Casablanca, which are in the region and not in the first pair. The same limit applies to the gateway itself. Mastercard Gateway can process a card, a local method and a wallet balance, and it can run fraud checks. It does not publish, in this note, the approval rate, the cost per transaction, or which of the 13 markets are contracted rather than intended. A white-label shop is only as local as the acquirer behind it. Training and a 24-hour support line help a publisher integrate. They do not prove that a checkout in a new country will clear on day one. Abu Dhabi’s stake in the story is the backing, not the payments rail. ADIO and Abu Dhabi Gaming have supported a Jordanian publisher that now clears Gulf checkouts through a global card firm. That is a different bet from building a local wallet. It also means the commercial terms between Mastercard and Tamatem Plus were not put in front of the studios that will use the shop. A publisher signing one integration still needs the rate card. If Tamatem Plus shows a completed Mastercard checkout in a third market after Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the 13-market line has started. If the next note is another quote, count countries live and payments cleared. The figure to ask for is the first week of volume, not the size of the regional games market.