// EXPERT COLUMN //

By Sindhu Kashyap, Senior Content Strategist, Middle East and Africa

Per-message WhatsApp billing, TikTok Shop, VoP checks and ISO 20022 are rewriting customer acquisition and cash flow across EMEA.

ME tech in EMEA is moving fast in 2025, with real costs, new rails and tighter rules that small teams can’ t ignore. Two channels are shifting underfoot. First, WhatsApp changed its Business Platform pricing on July 1 from conversation bundles to per-message billing and ads are appearing in the Updates tab.

If you lean on broadcast templates or customer support flows, revisit opt-ins, template hygiene and ROI – your acquisition costs can creep without tighter targeting and sensible automation.

Second, social commerce is graduating from experiment to staple. TikTok Shop expanded into France, Germany and Italy this spring, and Visa and TikTok launched ad-credit offers for UAE SMBs through September 30 – handy for testing creators and live shopping without big budgets.

Audit your catalogue syncs, fulfilment SLAs and returns; friction kills trust faster than any advert. Payments are being rewired. The EU’ s Instant Payments Regulation hardwires equal pricing and Verification of Payee; euroarea providers must support outgoing instant payments and VoP checks by October 9, 2025.

For SMEs that pay suppliers or payroll, this should result in fewer misdirected transfers and cleaner reconciliations – if your bank or PSP exposes namematching in their UX and APIs. In parallel, the SWIFT CBPR + coexistence period ends on November 22, 2025, completing the pivot to ISO 20022 so richer, structured data can flow across borders and into your finance stack.

Tax digitisation is another significant 2025 story. The UAE has confirmed a national e-invoicing mandate from 2026, with legislation and a pilot slated for the second half of this year; align your ERP, Peppol connectivity and archiving now.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia continues to expand its Fatoorah programme with additional Phase-2‘ waves’, including the June 23 wave, which now includes taxpayers with a turnover above SAR750,000, thereby bringing many SMEs into scope. Expect procurement teams across the Gulf to insist on compliant e-invoice flows during onboarding.

Security and compliance pressures are rising, too. NIS2 is filtering into vendor checks; Belgium required in-scope entities to register with its cyber authority in March and to evidence controls by April 2025, a pattern others will echo.

Meanwhile, the EU AI Act is staying on schedule despite calls for a pause; obligations for general-purpose AI begin in August 2025, so small teams embedding models should start light-touch governance now – model cards, human review and customer-facing transparency.

Finally, authentication is getting a longoverdue upgrade in the Gulf. The Central Bank of the UAE instructed licensed institutions in June to transition away from SMS and email one-time passcodes, replacing them with appbased and biometric methods.

Banks are to begin this transition from late July, with a complete phase-out targeted by March 2026. For SMEs, that means fewer OTP interruptions for staff and customers – but you’ ll need device-loss recovery plans and inapp approvals in your workflows.

Bottom line: budget for messaging price shifts, lean into social-commerce incentives while they last, press your bank or PSP on VoP and ISO 20022 support and get e-invoicing, AI and authentication onto the board agenda. In 2025, hygiene will be a significant advantage for SMEs across EMEA and the Middle East, starting now. �

18 Intelligent SME. tech