FinTech

COVID-19 accelerates Saudi Arabia’s push towards cashless society

Event Youth between the ages 16 and 22 in Saudi Arabia are using less cash compared to other age groups, indicating that the country’s transition towards a cashless society is on track. Analysis Saudi Arabia set a goal of gradually transforming into a cashless society by increasing the number of non-cash transactions to 70% by 2025 as part of its Saudi Vision 2030. Saudi Arabia has been taking huge strides in this regard during recent years, supported by the Government...

Importance of Fintech amid COVID-19

Interview with Mr. M.R.Raghu, CEO, Marmore MENA Intelligence Has the role of Fintech become more critical, given the pandemic? With the subsequent waves of the COVID-19 in place, it might take longer than expected for the situation to get back to absolute normalcy. This puts a spotlight on the increasing need for digitisation with Fintech. COVID-19 has certainly fast tracked Fintech adoption, which is very much evident from the data points. According to Mastercard, in MEA region contactless payments has...

Knitting Digital Worlds Together through APIs

Imagine that you are riding an Uber or Didi Ride back home. In the middle of the ride, you realised that there’s nothing cooked for dinner at home and time is short as you are already late. And you suddenly placed an online order for some fancy food with a newly discovered app and paid it by Paypal or VISA. When you reach your destination, you pay Uber by Paypal and a few minutes later, Mint app pops up a...

The Fintech Race between UAE and Bahrain

Bahrain, with the launch of dedicated FinTech Hub in Feb 2018 (Zawya), become the second country in the MENA region to have exclusive FinTech infrastructure followed by UAE. UAE is considered to be the leading hub for FinTech in the region (The National 2017), continuing boosting innovation and collaboration. UAE developed region’s first regulatory sandbox allowing new products to be tested for two years without full regulatory compliance.  FinTech in both the countries is in different stages where service domains...