For years, cross-border payment providers have treated SMEs as smaller versions of large corporations. The usual logic is to take enterprise infrastructure, simplify the pitch, reduce a few limits and call it an SME product.

But globally operating SMEs do not work like that.

A software studio paying contractors across five countries does not need the same infrastructure as a multinational treasury department. A creator platform distributing revenue to hundreds of partners cannot wait months for onboarding and custom integrations. These businesses need control and speed from tools that stay simple to run.

They are international from day one. But they are not enterprise. And the market keeps offering them either tools that are too basic, or infrastructure that is too heavy.

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The SME Has Changed

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The new SME hires remotely, sells globally, works with distributed teams, accepts payments in multiple currencies and often operates across both fiat and digital asset rails. Its finance function may still be one or two people, but its operational reality is already international.

That creates a mismatch: business models have globalised faster than the financial infrastructure built to support them.

For these companies, the question is rarely “how do we access more banking products?” It is more practical: how do we accept money from international clients, track what came in, manage balances, pay partners, settle into fiat when needed and avoid manual reconciliation? That is not an enterprise treasury problem. It is an operating problem.

Enterprise Infrastructure Is Not Always Beneficial

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Enterprise payment infrastructure has its place. Large companies need layered controls, custom integrations, approval chains and dedicated treasury tools.

The problem starts when the same logic is sold to companies that do not have enterprise resources. For SMEs, complexity is not sophistication, it is a cost. Every extra integration, unclear fee, compliance delay, manual approval and hidden settlement step becomes operational drag.

A large company can absorb that drag. An SME often cannot. In many cases, the founder, CFO or operations lead is also the person checking payout statuses, answering contractors, reconciling invoices and trying to understand why a transfer arrived short.

This is where many cross-border payment providers miss the SME market. They build powerful systems, but those systems assume the customer has the internal machinery to use them properly.

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Basic Crypto Tools Are Not Enough Either

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Crypto has offered a partial answer. Stablecoins, wallets and blockchain-based settlement have shown businesses that international money movement can be faster, more transparent and less dependent on legacy banking corridors.

But simply sending and receiving crypto is not the same as payment infrastructure.

A wallet address helps move money, but it does not handle invoicing. A payment link can collect funds, but it does not make reconciliation any easier. And while stablecoin transfers can speed up settlement, they do not automatically provide reporting, treasury management, payout controls or a smooth experience for the people receiving payments.

Moving funds is the easy part. The harder question is whether that movement can be managed.

This is the gap many providers ignore. On one side, SMEs have basic crypto tools that are fast but operationally thin. On the other, they have enterprise-grade systems that are powerful but expensive, slow and complex.

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The Real Gap Is Right-Sized Infrastructure

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The market does not need another “enterprise-lite” product. Instead, there is a clear need for infrastructure built around the real workflows of globally operating SMEs.

Pricing should be clear. SMEs do not have time to reverse-engineer FX spreads, payout fees, minimum commitments and hidden intermediary costs. Predictability is how small finance teams protect margins.

Fiat and crypto should not feel like separate worlds either. Many digital businesses already think in both: they may receive stablecoins, pay contractors in crypto, settle part of the balance into fiat and keep another part for liquidity. Infrastructure should reflect that reality instead of forcing teams to stitch together wallets, exchanges, banks and payout tools.

The recipient experience matters too. In payout-heavy businesses, contractors, creators, affiliates and partners are central to how the business runs. If getting paid is confusing, delayed or expensive, the platform’s reputation suffers.

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What SMEs Actually Need

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For SMEs, the best payment infrastructure is something they stop thinking about: client payments arrive; balances are visible; payouts are trackable; fees are clear. Contractors know what they received. Finance teams can reconcile without rebuilding the payment story manually.

This is the category we are building Performa for: digital-native SMEs that need international finance tools without being pushed into enterprise-level infrastructure. The platform brings crypto and fiat operations into one workspace, helping businesses manage pay-ins, treasury movement, payouts and settlement without stitching together several disconnected providers. The point is to give global SMEs an operating layer that matches the way they already work.

The market should not treat SMEs as failed enterprises. Their advantage is speed. Their infrastructure should protect that, not suffocate it.

The post Global SMEs Are Being Sold Enterprise Payment Infrastructure They Don’t Need appeared first on 91̽��.

The Qashio-NEXA partnership is a indicator of something broader. SMEs account for over 94% of companies in the UAE and contribute more than half of non-oil GDP, yet financial technology in the Gulf spent most of its first decade focused on consumer payments and enterprise banking. The tools that gave large corporations real-time spend control, automated compliance and data-driven access to capital are now arriving for small businesses – and change is accelerating faster than anticipated.

Over 500 fintech companies now operate across the GCC, up from fewer than ten in 2018. Saudi Arabia’s Fintech Saudi initiative and UAE hubs including ADGM and DIFC have created a regulatory environment that actively attracts both homegrown and international players. African fintechs including Paymob, MNT-Halan and Flutterwave are using Dubai as a regional base to reach Gulf SME markets, bringing payment infrastructure and credit solutions built for emerging market conditions into one of the world’s most liquid investment environments.

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What’s Actually Changing On The Ground

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The shift is most visible in the finance function itself. Where Gulf SMEs once relied on manual data entry, spreadsheet reconciliation and delayed reporting, AI-powered tools now handle receipt capture automatically – extracting TRN numbers, vendor names and transaction data instantly – while real-time dashboards give business owners visibility across all spending, cash flow and budgets without waiting for month-end.

The ripple effects are substantial; by using cleaner, AI-verified financial data, SMEs are changing their relationship with credit. Banks and alternative lenders that were reluctant to extend financing without reliable financial history now have access to verified data through platforms like Qashio, which has partnered with Dubai Chambers to reach SMEs across its network. Dubai Chambers represents 94% of companies operating in the UAE, making the distribution potential considerable.

NEXA AI Lab’s contribution to the partnership is the implementation and measurement layer: AI audits to identify where automation delivers the fastest return, ConvoAI for 24/7 financial data access, and the infrastructure to make AI adoption measurable rather than aspirational. The combination of spend management hardware (corporate cards), software (automated workflows) and AI advisory is the model other Gulf fintech players are likely to follow.

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The Startups Building It

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Qashio remains the most complete SME spend management solution in the UAE, covering corporate cards, expense automation and embedded finance from a single platform. NEXA AI Lab’s partnership extends its reach into AI implementation and operational support.

Paymob, which secured a full UAE Central Bank licence in 2025, is building regional payment infrastructure for SMEs across the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Oman. MNT-Halan, which expanded from Egypt into Dubai in 2026, brings salary financing and credit products developed for underserved SME markets. Flutterwave is expanding GCC operations with cross-border payment and treasury tools targeting the same segment.

These companies focus on SME credit and working capital rather than consumer payments. This segment, historically ignored by Gulf fintechs, is now commercially viable to serve at scale thanks to AI automation.

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What The Next Wave Looks Like

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The trajectory points toward always-on AI operations becoming standard for Gulf SMEs within two to three years. Real-time spend control, automated compliance and instant access to financial data – capabilities that required enterprise-level investment five years ago – are now accessible to businesses with ten employees and a corporate card.

Embedded finance is reshaping how Gulf SMEs access working capital. Platforms like Qashio now bake tailored payment cycles and working capital tools right into the spend management experience. For SMEs, this eliminates tedious bank applications, turning real-time, verified transaction histories into immediate funding opportunities. The regulatory support from Fintech Saudi and the UAE’s open banking framework makes this model significantly easier to build in the Gulf than in most other markets.

For anyone building or running a business in the GCC, the takeaway is clear: the tools to automate your finance function, improve your credit profile and reduce the hours your team spends on manual processing are now available and accessible.

The Gulf fintech wave spent its first decade building the pipes. It’s now building the products that run through them – and SMEs are finally first in line.

The post How AI Finance Automation Is Supercharging Gulf SMEs appeared first on 91̽��.

Revolut posted £1 billion in profit in 2024 and generated £1.1 billion in EBITDA. reported revenue above £1 billion and pre-tax profit of £53.5 million, up from £13.9 million the year before, according to Reuters. Between them, those two companies account for roughly 50% of UK fintech revenue – the sector looks healthy from a distance.

Take a closer look, and you’ll see there’s a lot more going on. Curve, which once had ambitions of a $50 to $60 billion valuation and raised more than £250 million since 2016, has sold to Lloyds for £120 million – less than half what it raised. GoCardless is heading for a discounted exit via a £920 million sale to Mollie, below its peak valuation. The median EBITDA margin across UK fintech improved from -97% in 2022 to -6.4% in 2024 as companies cut costs hard. And excluding Revolut’s £1.1 billion contribution, the entire rest of the UK fintech sector combined produced just £100 million in EBITDA last year.

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One Decision Made Years Ago

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The divide between the winners and the distressed exits doesn’t trace back to luck or market timing. It traces back to a strategic choice made years before the funding environment changed: whether to build for unit economics and profitability from early on, or to chase growth at all costs and worry about the rest later.

Revolut and Monzo chose the former – both pushed hard on efficiency as the cheap capital era ended, reached positive EBITDA sustainably and built revenue models that could actually support their scale. The companies now struggling chose the latter – raised at inflated valuations during the years when capital was essentially free, scaled aggressively without a clear path to profitability and are now selling at discounts or restructuring in a market where investors have stopped accepting “we’ll figure out the margins later” as a plan.

The data speaks for itself, showing exactly this evolution across the industry. While 17 major achieved profitability in 2023, that number rose to 22 the following year. The mantra across the industry has moved to “low growth but high efficiency”. It’s a direct reversal of the logic that defined the 2019 to 2022 boom years, and the companies that didn’t start making that shift early enough are the ones now selling for less than they raised.

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What The Curve Case Study Illustrates

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Curve is the most instructive case study because the distance between ambition and outcome is so stark.
The company set out to build a supercard product that consolidated multiple bank cards into one – a compelling consumer idea that attracted serious investment and real users. But the unit economics never caught up with the vision. After a decade of trying, it sold for £120 million to , a company it was arguably trying to make irrelevant.

GoCardless is a different kind of exit. The business has genuine scale and a real product – direct debit and recurring payment infrastructure – but the £920 million sale to Mollie still represents a significant discount from its peak £4 billion+ valuation.

The founders get their payday, but the peak-to-exit trajectory tells the classic Curve story: valuation inflation followed by a reckoning when hypergrowth stopped being enough.

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The Takeaway For Business Builders

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While the UK fintech sector hit £8.9 billion in revenue in 2024 and continues to grow, a distinct and permanent divide is locking in between top performers and lagging firms. The companies with a future in this market are the ones that figured out how to make money while they were growing, not the ones that assumed profitability would materialise once they hit a certain scale.

The era of cheap capital that made the growth-at-all-costs model viable is over. Investors want to see the money-making mechanics today, not just a “trust us” on future margins. Those building today who are still operating on the logic that scale comes first and economics comes later are building toward the same outcome as Curve. The data from the last 18 months is about as clear a warning as the industry has ever produced.

The post Profit Or Perish: The Strategic Choice Separating UK Fintech’s Winners From Its Casualties appeared first on 91̽��.

The platform connects users with banks and licensed lenders through a single digital interface, built around Islamic financing principles from the ground up rather than retrofitted with a compliance layer.

The sheer scale of that capital, combined with how underserved it is, creates a remarkable market opportunity. There are 400 million Muslim consumers in MENA alone. The global Islamic finance industry is valued at over $2 trillion. Shariah-compliant is projected to reach $341 billion by 2029. The regulatory environment is forming – Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar are rolling out dedicated Shariah-compliant testing environments and crowdfunding guidelines. Consumer demand exists, and the competition is sparse.

Meryem Habibi, Chief Revenue Officer at Bitpace, points to where the real product differentiation lies. “Islamic fintech is different to conventional fintech because compliance can be led by the product, structurally aligned with Islamic principles from day one,” she says.

“Whether through profit-sharing models, asset-backed financing or interest-free structures, it depends on deep collaboration between technology teams and regulators. Founders can differentiate by creating innovative financial products that balance trust, Shariah compliance and accessibility. Cross-border payments, SME financing, digital banking, halal investment products and embedded finance all remain significantly underserved across MENA and parts of Southeast Asia.”

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Why So Few Founders Are Building Here

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Islamic fintech isn’t conventional fintech with an extra compliance requirement.

Interest (riba) is prohibited, so revenue models must be structured around Murabaha cost-plus financing, Mudarabah profit-sharing or Ijara asset-backed leasing. Shariah scholars must certify products, and risk-sharing between parties is a structural requirement. Social impact mechanisms – Zakat automation, Waqf management – are integral to the product category. Those requirements create barriers to entry. They also mean that founders who clear them face less competition than the opportunity size would normally attract.

Corina Goetz, Gulf cultural intelligence consultant and founder of Star-CaT, argues that most founders misread the market even before they get to the product architecture. “A Western founder reads $341 billion by 2029 and sees a market to capture,” she says. “The founders who actually win read it differently. They understand that a customer isn’t choosing a financial product. They are choosing whether they believe you respect what matters to them.”

That angle flips the script on the market entry logic. satisfies one requirement but doesn’t create consumer trust in a market where trust is built through demonstrated cultural knowledge, certified religious validity and community endorsement.

“The conventional fintech playbook misfires here,” Goetz says. “Move fast, acquire users, optimise the funnel – that logic assumes the customer’s decision is rational and quick. In the Gulf, the decision is relational and slow. Authenticity cannot be retrofitted with a compliance badge. People can tell.”

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Where The Real Product Opportunities Are

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The categories with the clearest near-term opportunity are , halal wealth management, takaful insurance, Zakat and Waqf digitisation and SME financing for businesses currently locked out of the formal credit system. Each has strong demand and limited supply. Muslims are actively seeking faith-aligned alternatives to conventional financial products and finding few digital options beyond traditional banks.

Goetz adds a geographic warning that founders approaching the region as a single market tend to learn the hard way. “There is no single MENA opportunity,” she says. “Saudi, the UAE, and Qatar are three distinct markets with three different appetites, regulators, and customer expectations. Treating them as one region is the most common, most expensive mistake I see.”

The barriers to entry in Islamic fintech – Shariah certification, product architecture complexity, cultural credibility – are exactly what has kept the market underdeveloped. They’re also exactly what will protect once they’ve built their position. “The biggest opportunity is not a product category,” Goetz says. “It is the founders who build credibility first and sell second – because in this region, that is the only sequence that works.”

The post Islamic Fintech Is Having Its Moment – Why Are So Few Founders Building For It? appeared first on 91̽��.

In an article called “The Next Phase of MENA FinTech Growth”, Arthur D. Little reported that venture capital funding in MENA reached $3.8 billion during 2025. Mal secured $230 million in investment, HALA secured $157 million in Series B funding, Tabby announced a $160 million Series E round, and Rain secured $58 million in Series B financing.

All of this funding activity took place, even though there were many international markets dealing with sanctions risks and regulatory confusion around crypto products. Fintech founders in the Gulf continued building payment infrastructure and digital financial services aimed at consumers and small businesses.

Ethan Yang, Head of Ops and Strategy at CTGT, said investors view MENA fintech as infrastructure with long term commercial demand.

“My perspective is more from the lens of finance, VC-backed startups, and technology adoption in finance. MENA fintech continues to attract capital because investors are backing infrastructure , SME credit, remittances, compliance, and embedded finance.

“MENA is a market where financial access is still uneven and governments are actively pushing digitisation and diversification, fintech demand is more structural than discretionary. That is why the sector can continue to perform even when the macro or geopolitical environment looks unstable from the outside.”

Arthur D. Little and Fintech Tuesdays surveyed around 140 fintech founders and executives across MENA. The research found that 77% believed the fintech sector was in a better position than 12 months earlier, although more than 70% also reported difficulties securing capital.

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Why Are Crypto And Fintech Founders Choosing The Gulf?

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Fintech businesses continued opening offices in the UAE and Bahrain because Gulf regulators moved faster than authorities in the United States and Europe on licensing frameworks for crypto businesses and digital assets.

Safi Ghauri, Managing Partner at Esquare Legal, said geopolitical instability did not scare regional investors away from fintech deals.

“Rationality would dictate that scares off capital but in practice this is just wrong, at least in MENA fintech. What I actually see is the opposite. When traditional cross-border banking becomes unreliable and new factors emerge like sanctions risk and dollar-clearing friction the regional capital starts looking for alternatives. For the investors in the gulf they recognise that this a once a in a lifetime opportunity to get in on investments when things are cheap and fear is high.”

Ghauri also said western crypto founders faced regulatory confusion that made the Gulf more appealing.

“What’s accelerating it specifically in the Gulf is the regulatory regime. Western founders are genuinely stuck right now because the US is still figuring out basic crypto jurisdiction questions whereas Europe is mid-MiCA implementation and has managed to scare off all crypto talent with convoluted rules. Meanwhile UAE has handed out real licenses with detailed rulebooks. The Gulf is currently offering both stability on regulation and access to a market that actually needs these products.”

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Arthur D. Little reported that almost 60% of survey respondents viewed the UAE as the market most likely to lead fintech innovation over the next three years. Nearly half also gave positive ratings to the UAE regulatory environment.

The report explained that fintech companies in Dubai and Abu Dhabi have now operated for more than a decade, giving the region mature ecosystems, experienced founders, and established investment networks.

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Which Fintech Sectors Are Bringing In The Most Money?

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SME finance and digital payments received some serious investor attention throughout the survey.

Arthur D. Little reported that respondents believed do not serve small and medium sized businesses properly. That leaves room for fintech lenders offering embedded lending products, alternative credit scoring systems, and faster access to working capital.

Cross border payments also attracted interest because of the Gulf’s expatriate population and international workforce. Survey respondents viewed stablecoins and blockchain payment rails as useful tools for faster transfers and smoother international transactions.

Digital wallets received attention because card usage remains low in parts of MENA. Respondents viewed wallet based systems as an easier entry point for financial services and embedded finance products.

Islamic fintech also received interest from founders and investors. Survey participants said digital first Shariah compliant products for lending, savings, and wealth management continue attracting customer demand.

Arthur D. Little found that 68% of respondents viewed payments as the fintech sector most likely to merge Web2 and Web3 products over the next few years.

The survey also found that embedded finance ranked highest among fintech technologies at 34%, ahead of AI and machine learning at 29%, and open banking at 21%.

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What Problems Are Fintech Businesses Facing?

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Arthur D. Little reported that many continue struggling with bank partnerships and fragmented regulation across the region.

The survey found that 73% of respondents believed banks were adapting too slowly to fintech developments. Respondents blamed ageing technology systems, cultural resistance, and risk aversion within banks.

Cross border regulation also created operational problems for fintech businesses operating in multiple countries. Arthur D. Little reported that 78% of respondents viewed lack of regulatory harmonisation between jurisdictions as a major obstacle.

Funding distribution also frustrated startup founders. Arthur D. Little explained that a large share of investment money went into mega deals involving a relatively small group of fintech companies, leaving smaller startups competing for limited capital pools.

The report also found a disconnect between ownership and organisational adoption. Around 56% of respondents said they either owned crypto assets or planned to purchase them personally. Only 25% said their companies had integrated crypto products into business operations.

and even with those operational difficulties, fintech businesses across MENA just kept on attracting investor money, regulatory approvals and, of course, customer demand for digital financial products.

The post Why Does The MENA Fintech Sector Continue To Attract Capital Even In Unstable Environments? Experts Weigh In appeared first on 91̽��.

Saudi Arabia’s SAMA has launched an open banking licensing framework; the UAE runs the AlTareq framework giving licensed third parties access to financial data and payments; and Bahrain has had pilots running since 2020.

This infrastructure is the enabling layer for embedded finance – financial products built directly into the platforms businesses already use rather than offered through standalone bank interfaces. Account aggregation, , automated SME credit decisions and workflow-native lending all become commercially viable once those rails are in place.

In markets where open banking has already matured – the UK, Australia, Brazil – the early movers built distribution, data relationships and product habits that proved very difficult for later entrants to dislodge. The Gulf is earlier in that curve, which means the positions available right now won’t be available in three years.

Key players including Tamara, Tabby, Wio Bank and Rasan are already demonstrating that embedded finance is live and growing in MENA. The question for anyone building in the region is whether they move before the infrastructure is fully in place and competition intensifies, or wait for certainty and find the best opportunities already taken.

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Finding the Biggest Advantages

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The highest-probability areas for embedded finance in the Gulf are cross-border payments and SME lending – both are fuelled by structural gaps that open banking data can help fix.

remain expensive and fragmented despite the volume flowing through the region, and open banking rails give fintech firms a route to building cleaner, cheaper services around those flows. SME lending has been chronically underserved by traditional banks, and real-time access to financial data changes the risk assessment: businesses that were invisible to the formal credit system become bankable when their cash flows are verifiable in real time.

Market leaders will be the first to truly master the foundational systems – strong bank integrations, regulatory fluency across multiple Gulf jurisdictions and compliance infrastructure that can scale are as important as the product itself.

The compliance layer is where many embedded finance plays get made or lost. Multi-jurisdictional AML/KYC, automated sanctions screening and transaction monitoring that adapts to local regulatory changes aren’t optional extras – they’re the infrastructure that determines whether a product can scale across the GCC. Founders who treat compliance as a day-one architectural decision rather than a retrofit will move between markets significantly faster.

We asked a group of experts across fintech, compliance, infrastructure and AI to weigh in on where the open banking opportunity is most compelling – and what founders need to get right to capture it.

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Our Experts

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• Ryan Kirkley: Co-founder and CEO, Global Settlement Network
• Dr. Ravishankar Chamarajnagar: Founder and CEO, BRACKT AI
• Thomas Berndorfer: CEO, Connecting Software
• Aditya Singh: Head of Product and Strategy, INFINOX

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Ryan Kirkley, Co-founder and CEO, Global Settlement Network

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“Saudi Arabia’s National Strategy 2030 is a great example because there is a clear long-term vision behind it that goes beyond attracting startups. The goal of the larger strategy is to attract the best in talent and investment to create the infrastructure, regulatory environment and overall landscape needed to support entirely new financial industries. When you combine that with ecosystems like DIFC and ADGM in the UAE, you start to see why founders are paying attention. Capital, policy and technology are all moving together, which creates an environment where businesses can scale quickly and effectively.

“The Gulf also occupies a unique position globally as the region serves as a natural connection point to Europe, Africa and APAC, which gives founders access to markets far beyond a single region. Many companies entering the UAE don’t look at it as one market – they’re looking at it as a launch point into multiple growth corridors at once.

“The companies that own categories over the next few years will probably be the ones moving closest to real customer pain points today. Founders have a relatively short window where markets are still taking shape and customer behaviour is still forming. The advantage goes to those that are actually spending time on the ground, forming relationships early and becoming part of the landscape before it becomes crowded.”

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Dr. Ravishankar Chamarajnagar, Founder and CEO, BRACKT AI

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“Given the region’s large expat population, active intra-Gulf business corridors, and significant oil and gas settlement flows, there is strong demand for cross-border payments to be executed with flawless precision. Open banking can support this demand, but only if compliance infrastructure maintains pace. Founders must address multi-jurisdictional compliance from the outset to lead in cross-border embedded finance, or risk substantial regulatory barriers and fines.

“The founders who will own this category are directly building , multijurisdictional compliance into their embedded finance products. This means real-time AML/KYC across Gulf frameworks, automated sanctions screening, and transaction monitoring that adapts to evolving regulations. The winning playbook isn’t just faster payment rails – it’s a compliant-by-design architecture that uses modern APIs and AI to handle cross-border complexity from day one.”

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Thomas Berndorfer, CEO, Connecting Software

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“What stands out in the UAE’s move toward blockchain-based digital business identity is not the blockchain itself, but the broader move toward machine-verifiable trust infrastructure. AI systems now generate, process and exchange information autonomously, so organisations need stronger ways to prove the integrity and authenticity of digital records without relying solely on centralised databases or manual verification.

“Blockchain has real value here when used pragmatically. Its strength is not that it makes information true, but that it makes tampering detectable. A cryptographic audit trail allows independent parties to verify whether a document, credential or record has remained unchanged – a critical capability in environments shaped by AI-generated content, automated workflows and increasingly sophisticated fraud.

“The long-term opportunity is likely less about putting entire business processes on-chain and more about building verifiable trust layers around critical digital assets and decisions. Organisations that approach blockchain as an integrity and verification tool – rather than a branding exercise – will ultimately create the most durable enterprise value.”

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Aditya Singh, Head of Product and Strategy, INFINOX

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“The Gulf’s open banking buildout is one of the most important infrastructure shifts in emerging market fintech right now. The two opportunities that stand out are cross-border payments and . The Gulf has one of the world’s largest remittance corridors, with millions of migrant workers sending money home every month through expensive and fragmented channels. Open banking rails give firms a chance to build cleaner, faster and cheaper services around that flow.

“SME lending is the other major gap. Traditional banks in the region have historically underserved smaller businesses. Access to real-time financial data through open banking makes it much easier to assess risk, underwrite properly and serve businesses that may have been invisible to the formal credit system.

“In other markets, the early advantage has often gone to firms that understood the plumbing first. Strong bank integrations, regulatory fluency and reliable distribution matter as much as the product interface. The priority now is focus – pick the right use case, build bank and platform relationships while the frameworks are still forming, and make sure your compliance infrastructure can scale with the business. The opportunity is significant, but the firms that benefit most will be the ones that build properly underneath.”

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For any questions, comments or features, .

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The post Open Banking Is Coming To The Gulf – Which Founders Will Move Fast Enough To Own The Opportunity? appeared first on 91̽��.

and crypto payments infrastructure are accelerating across the UAE, Bahrain and the wider GCC at a pace that’s attracting founders, institutions and capital from around the world. The region’s advantage is less about crypto-friendliness in the abstract and more about something rarer: regulatory clarity arrived early.

The UAE’s Payment Token Services Regulation came into effect in August 2024, setting licensing, reserve segregation, audit and capital requirements for payment tokens used domestically. Bahrain followed with a formal stablecoin framework in 2025, allowing fiat-backed stablecoins subject to prior approval. Dubai’s VARA and Abu Dhabi’s ADGM have both built structures that give businesses a defined path forward rather than a grey zone to navigate.

That combination of real-world demand – remittances, FX settlement, trade finance, cross-border payments – and workable regulation is what distinguishes the Gulf from markets that have similar ambitions but slower execution.

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The Gulf Isn’t Waiting Around for the Future of Finance

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Diego Martin, CEO of Yellow Capital, sees the shift clearly from his advisory work with founders and institutions across Europe and Dubai:

“I think one of the biggest misconceptions people still have is that companies are coming to the Gulf simply because it is and truth be told, that’s not really what we see. In many cases, founders and institutions are coming here because they want certainty, access and speed. They want markets where they can actually build with confidence and focus on growing a business instead of constantly trying to navigate changing rules and unclear frameworks and the UAE has done a very strong job creating that environment.

“Dubai through VARA and Abu Dhabi through ADGM have put real structures in place that give businesses a clearer path forward and eventually that changes behaviour. Once the rules are clear, founders start thinking bigger, institutions become more comfortable getting involved and companies feel far more confident making long-term bets.

“At Yellow Capital, we work with a wide range of clients across Europe and Dubai in a high-level advisory capacity, and we see these conversations happening every day. The teams we work with are asking very practical questions: Where can we find the right partners? Where is institutional capital paying attention? Which markets give us the best chance to scale? More and more, the GCC comes up very early on in those conversations. The companies getting ahead today are making smart moves early on and increasingly those moves are bringing founders to the Gulf.”

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The Regulatory Contrast Is Driving Real Decisions

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Safi Ghauri, founder and managing partner of Esquare Legal – a Dubai-based crypto law firm that secured one of the earliest VARA licences and currently works with a leading RWA tokenisation project and an Islamic stablecoin project in the UAE – puts the founder perspective bluntly:

“Almost all founders tell us the same story, about how they are suffocated by the regulatory burdens of MiCA or lack of clarity in US legislation, not to mention the astronomical taxation. Roughly $450 billion in crypto wealth has been injected by these founders into the UAE’s economy making it the largest global recipient of inward crypto remittances.

“Apart from institutional participation, the UAE takes a head-on approach to tackling the changes in and by explicitly licensing and creating clear guardrails for fiat-backed tokens, the UAE allows founders to move past retail crypto and build what institutions actually want – programmable B2B cross-border settlement. That ends up making the UAE the settlement layer.”

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Emerging Leader, Not Finished Product

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The Gulf’s position is real but not yet settled – the region’s biggest structural challenge is fragmentation: multiple regulators, licensing ambiguity across jurisdictions and uneven rules between markets still create friction for issuers, wallets, custodians and banks.

Saudi Arabia’s stablecoin agenda remains at the policy-design stage rather than a fully implemented framework, which means the GCC isn’t moving in lockstep. Global leadership in payments depends on interoperability, bank integration and cross-border recognition – and on those measures, work remains.

More precisely, the Gulf is emerging as a true leader in specific niches first: cross-border settlement, remittances and s built around real institutional demand rather than retail speculation.

That’s a narrower claim than “global hub” but a more durable one. The founders and institutions arriving in Dubai right now are betting that the window for building in a clear regulatory environment – before it becomes competitive and crowded – is open and narrowing.

The post Why The Gulf Is Becoming The Go-To Destination For Crypto And Stablecoin Innovation appeared first on 91̽��.

CME Group and Silicon Data have announced a partnership to launch a futures market for computing capacity, with contracts cash-settled to Silicon Data’s daily GPU price indexes for on-demand rental rates. The launch is planned for later in 2026 and is subject to regulatory review. When it goes live, it will be the first time AI compute has been formally treated as a standardised, exchange-traded commodity – and that directly impacts every founder running an with significant infrastructure costs.

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What The Futures Market Actually Does

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It works in a simple way: Silicon Data provides standardised daily price indexes for GPU on-demand rental rates, CME Group lists futures contracts tied to those indexes, buyers and sellers can then use those contracts to lock in future GPU prices, hedge against cost spikes or take speculative positions on where compute costs are heading. The contracts settle in cash against the index rather than physically delivering hardware, which keeps the operational complexity manageable.

The intended users, per the announcement and coverage by Morningstar, are traders, financial institutions, cloud providers and AI builders. For , practical use cases fall into two main categories. Training hedges: lock in per-hour costs for a planned model training run before prices spike during a demand surge. Inference hedges: if your product’s inference costs scale with traffic, you can size a hedge against expected monthly inference hours to stabilise gross margins.

CME’s own comparison is to fuel hedging for airlines – you’re not eliminating the cost, you’re converting unpredictable exposure into a known figure.

Why This Changes The Economics Of Building AI

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The real change is structural: GPU costs have historically been an AI startup’s most volatile and unpredictable expense.

Spot prices for H100 rental have swung dramatically with demand cycles, making it very difficult to model unit economics, plan runway or make confident hiring and product decisions downstream of compute cost assumptions. A futures market creates a forward price curve – a market-implied expectation of where GPU costs are heading – which improves planning for compute-heavy business models in ways that have nothing to do with actually hedging.

The fundraising angle is equally important. According to Bloomberg’s coverage of the announcement, lenders, VCs and treasury functions will be able to treat compute commitments and exposures as quantifiable, market-priced risks rather than operational guesses. That opens the door to credit products, covenant structures and valuation approaches that incorporate locked-in compute costs.

The is partly what makes GPU pricing volatile at the spot level – a futures market provides a mechanism to manage that exposure rather than simply absorb it.

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Before You Hedge Anything, Read This

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There are some practical considerations, mostly affecting . The most significant is basis risk: the Silicon Data index reflects a specific market’s on-demand rental rates, which may diverge from your actual costs if you run on negotiated cloud discounts, reserved capacity or hardware that doesn’t match the index’s benchmark GPU. An imperfect hedge is still a hedge, but founders need to understand how closely their actual cost structure tracks the index before sizing positions.

Liquidity is also a factor at launch – new futures markets take time to attract the trading volume that makes bid-ask spreads tight enough to be practical for smaller-scale hedging. Early contracts may be better suited to larger cloud providers and financial institutions than to seed-stage startups.

For startups, determining the right price is often the most critical first step – using the forward curve as a planning tool – rather than in active hedging. The operational overhead of margin management and derivatives compliance adds cost and complexity that not every startup is ready to absorb.

The hands-on checklist from here: quantify your GPU-hour usage by workflow (training versus inference) so you can size a hedge accurately; assess how closely your actual costs track the Silicon Data benchmark; and when the contracts list, consider small-scale or time-limited positions to test effectiveness before embedding hedging into core financial planning. As with most financial instruments, the value depends entirely on how well it fits your specific cost structure.

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The primary listing moves from London to the US in May 2026, with Wise’s most recent fiscal year showing net revenue of approximately $2.5 billion, up 19% year on year. For a company that listed on the LSE in 2021 as one of London’s flagship tech IPOs, the move is a landmark moment. But it’s not a clean departure – Wise is relisting in London simultaneously, keeping a secondary listing on the LSE rather than abandoning it entirely.

The dual structure is where this gets interesting – and where the lessons for UK founders thinking about exits are most useful.

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Why Nasdaq, And Why Now

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The logic behind moving the primary listing to the US is simple – Nasdaq offers deeper liquidity, a larger, tech-fluent participant base, and the kind of valuation multiples that London has historically struggled to match for high-growth technology companies.

Wise processes hundreds of billions of dollars in cross-border payments annually and presents verifiable revenue growth to satisfy institutional investors. In that context, listing where the largest pools of capital actively seek that kind of story is a rational decision.

The governance structure accompanying the move is also notable. As reported by the Financial Times, Wise extended its dual-class share structure as part of the US listing, preserving enhanced voting rights for founders including CEO Kristo Käärmann for up to ten years.

The protection of founder control through a public markets transition is a conscious design choice, and one that US capital markets are considerably more comfortable accommodating than London has traditionally been.

What The London Secondary Listing Actually Signals

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The decision to maintain a London secondary listing rather than delisting entirely says something about how Wise views its relationship with the UK market.

The move has been framed as simultaneously a blow to London’s capital market ambitions and a pragmatic hedge: Nasdaq provides the primary liquidity and valuation engine, while the LSE secondary listing keeps Wise visible to European institutional investors, anchors the company’s identity as a UK-born business and maintains the brand presence in a market where it has significant customer and talent relationships.

The dual-listing structure isn’t a consolation prize for London. It’s a signal that London remains useful – for marketing, for European , for talent branding – even when it’s no longer the primary capital markets venue. That’s a subtler and more nuanced position than the headline “London loses another fintech” framing suggests.

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The Playbook For Founders

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Wise’s path serves as a pragmatic model for the ambitious UK fintech founders navigating the London versus New York question.

Traditionally, this is viewed as an either/or scenario: list in London and accept lower valuations and shallower liquidity, or list in New York and largely sever ties with the UK market. Wise’s move suggests a third option is now viable – use Nasdaq as the primary capital-markets anchor and maintain London as a secondary listing that serves European investors and preserves domestic brand presence.

The timing is calculated. Wise is making this move at a point of firm footed financial strength, with revenue growing and the business operating at scale. For watching this, the lesson is less about the dual-listing mechanism and more about the underlying principle: build the business strong enough that both markets want you, then structure the listing to capture both.

The shareholders approved the move, though not without some dissent from co-founders and early investors concerned about governance and dilution. The extended dual-class structure, protecting founder voting rights for a decade, was part of how that tension was managed.

For founders thinking about the long game, that governance design is as instructive as the listing geography.

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According to the British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (BVCA), the UK remains one of Europe’s largest private capital markets, with billions invested annually across technology, healthcare, infrastructure, and mid market businesses. However, with growth comes operational complexity. Fund managers now face more demanding reporting obligations, intricate capital structures, and heightened scrutiny from investors and regulators alike.

As a result, many firms are moving away from traditional spreadsheets and fragmented accounting systems in favour of modern digital platforms. Investing in the right is increasingly viewed as essential for maintaining operational efficiency, ensuring compliance and supporting long term growth.

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The Increasing Complexity Of Private Equity Finance

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Private equity accounting differs significantly from standard corporate finance management. Firms must handle fund accounting, investor allocations, carried interest calculations, capital calls, waterfall structures, and portfolio performance tracking, often across multiple jurisdictions and currencies.

At the same time, regulatory requirements in the UK continue to evolve. Firms authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority must comply with strict reporting, governance, and anti money laundering obligations. Investors are also demanding greater transparency around performance metrics, environmental reporting, and operational risk. Managing these responsibilities manually can create serious inefficiencies and increase the likelihood of errors.

Many firms still rely heavily on spreadsheets for investor reporting and fund management processes. While spreadsheets offer flexibility, they can become difficult to manage as firms scale. Version control issues, duplicated data, and manual calculations often slow down reporting cycles and create unnecessary operational risk. Modern finance technology helps address these challenges by centralising financial data and automating key accounting processes.

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Why Traditional Accounting Systems Fall Short

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Standard accounting platforms are rarely designed to meet the specific requirements of private equity firms. While they may support basic bookkeeping functions, they often lack the specialised capabilities required for fund structures and investor management.

Private equity firms require systems that can manage:

• Complex partnership accounting
• Multi entity consolidations
• Investor capital accounts
• Carried interest calculations
• Waterfall distributions
• Portfolio company reporting
• Multi currency transactions
• Regulatory reporting requirements

Without dedicated functionality, finance teams may spend excessive amounts of time reconciling data manually and preparing bespoke reports for investors. As firms expand their portfolios and fundraising activity increases, these inefficiencies can quickly become costly.

The Benefits Of Dedicated Private Equity Finance Platforms

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Specialist private equity accounting software is designed specifically to support the operational demands of investment firms. These systems streamline workflows, reduce administrative burden, and provide more accurate real time financial insights.

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Improved Investor Reporting

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Investor expectations have evolved significantly in recent years. Limited partners increasingly expect faster access to accurate performance data and transparent reporting.

Modern accounting platforms allow firms to generate investor statements, capital account reports and performance summaries automatically. This reduces manual workloads while improving reporting consistency. Faster reporting also strengthens investor confidence and improves communication between fund managers and stakeholders.

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Enhanced Accuracy And Compliance

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Financial errors within private equity can have significant consequences, particularly when managing complex fund structures and investor distributions.

Automated systems reduce reliance on manual calculations and provide stronger audit trails across transactions and approvals. Many platforms also include built in compliance controls that support FCA reporting requirements and internal governance procedures. This helps firms reduce operational risk while simplifying audit preparation.

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Better Portfolio Visibility

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Private equity firms need accurate portfolio data to support strategic decision making. Real time dashboards and consolidated reporting allow finance teams and partners to monitor portfolio performance more effectively.

This visibility can help firms identify underperforming assets, assess liquidity positions and make faster investment decisions. As market conditions become more volatile, access to timely financial data is becoming increasingly important.

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The Shift Towards Cloud Based Solutions

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Cloud technology adoption has accelerated rapidly across the UK financial services sector, including private equity.

Cloud based finance platforms offer several advantages compared to legacy on premises systems:

• Real time access to financial information
• Improved collaboration across teams
• Reduced infrastructure and maintenance costs
• Enhanced data security and backup capabilities
• Automatic software updates
• Easier scalability as firms grow

For firms managing geographically dispersed teams or international investments, cloud accessibility also supports more efficient collaboration and reporting processes.

Cybersecurity remains a major consideration for investment firms, particularly given the sensitive financial information involved. Many modern platforms now include advanced encryption, user access controls, and compliance certifications to strengthen data protection.

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Supporting Operational Scalability

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As private equity firms grow, operational demands increase significantly. New funds, acquisitions, and investor relationships all create additional reporting and administrative complexity.

Scalable finance systems allow firms to expand without proportionally increasing back office workload. Automation can reduce repetitive manual tasks while enabling finance teams to focus on higher value strategic activities.

This is particularly important for mid market firms seeking to compete with larger institutions while maintaining lean operational structures. Technology also plays an increasingly important role during fundraising and due diligence processes. Investors expect firms to demonstrate robust financial controls, transparent reporting capabilities and operational maturity before committing capital.

Modern accounting infrastructure can therefore become a competitive advantage.

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Technology As A Strategic Investment

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While implementing new financial systems requires investment, many firms now view technology as a critical part of long term operational strategy rather than simply an administrative tool. The right private equity accounting software can help firms improve reporting accuracy, strengthen compliance, increase efficiency and support scalable growth in an increasingly competitive market.

As regulatory scrutiny and investor expectations continue to rise across the UK private equity sector, firms that modernise their financial operations are likely to be better positioned for sustainable success.

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