RIYADH: Checkout.com is eying more expansion in the Middle East and is planning to hire around a hundred more employees in the region this year with “nearly half of them are here in Saudi,” Guillaume Pousaz, Founder & CEO said. Saudi Arabia is a growing market with a young population and high penetration of cell phones. While cash, or cash-on-delivery, is still currently the preferred way to pay for online purchases in Saudi Arabia, Apple pay is quickly gaining traction, Pousaz told Arab News on the sidelines of the LEAP event. “We were doing the first Apple Pay transactions here in Saudi and the market is growing extremely fast,” Pousaz added. Checkout.com was launched as a cloud-based payments platform in 2012.