For centuries, financial institutions relied on one advantage. Whether it was the range of their products, their pricing, or how far their services could reach. Today, those advantages are easy to replicate. Digital infrastructure is widely available, capital moves quickly across borders, and acquiring customers is increasingly automated. What now sets institutions apart is not the breadth of their offerings or the cost of their services. It is the confidence they inspire.

In a world that is increasingly more fragmented, turbulent, and cautious, trust has become one of the few advantages that cannot be replicated. Global investment patterns illustrate this shift. According to the UNCTAD World Investment Report 2025, foreign direct investment (FDI) remains far below its early 2010s peak, reflecting a world that is more risk-aware and geopolitically sensitive. The World Bank’s Global Economic Prospects also highlights uneven growth and rising uncertainty across regions. This means capital is no longer chasing the highest return; instead it is seeking predictability. And institutions that inspire trust are the ones most likely to attract it.

Capital Moves Toward Certainty

The UAE offers a compelling example. The EMIR report, supported by Qashio, Flows of Capital: Mapping the UAE’s Role as a Global Financial Gateway, shows that FDI into the country reached $40 billion, doubling from 2019 levels, and accounting for 40% of gross capital formation compared to a developed economy average of 4.3%. That differential cannot be explained by tax efficiency alone. It reflects regulatory clarity, institutional stability, and operational reliability, all of which underpin trust

The same principle is playing out at the company level.

UAE banks are increasingly pushing for founders and business owners to separate personal and corporate spending. On paper, that is a compliance issue. In reality, it signals a structural shift. Poor accounting discipline creates risk. Blurred financial lines complicate audits, funding discussions, and cross-border expansion. When investors and regulators examine financial behaviour, governance becomes visible immediately, highlighting that trust begins with discipline.

Designing Trust: Transparency, Control, Reliability

As finance becomes more digital, trust is becoming more measurable. It rests on three interlocking foundations: transparency, control, and reliability.

Transparency is now a baseline expectation. Customers want to know what they are paying, when transactions settle, and how fees are calculated. The scale of global financial flows reinforces this demand. The World Bank estimates that remittance flows to low- and middle-income countries reached $685 billion in 2024. That figure exceeds FDI and official development assistance combined for those economies. When volumes are that significant, even marginal opacity in pricing or settlement becomes economically material, making clarity a matter of cost efficiency at the system level rather than a branding exercise.

Control is equally critical. Modern finance teams operate across distributed workforces, multi-entity structures, and global vendor networks. Organisations lose an estimated 5% of revenue annually to fraud. While fraud has multiple sources, weak internal controls and policy bypass increase exposure. Giving customers direct control of their funds, through stronger controls and policies, helps reinforce trust in financial institutions.

The most resilient organisations design policy directly into their payment infrastructure. Approval hierarchies, spend limits, and permission layers are embedded into the system itself. This allows companies to move quickly without sacrificing oversight. The distinction between proactive and reactive governance is not philosophical. It determines speed, cost of capital, and investor confidence.

Reliability completes the triad. Finance is ultimately about certainty. Platforms must perform consistently. Settlements must arrive when expected. Liquidity windows must be predictable. Inconsistent infrastructure creates friction not just for finance teams, but for suppliers and partners across the value chain.

The Economics of “Free”

Digital finance has conditioned customers to expect “free” services: zero-fee accounts, no-cost cards, complimentary transfers. Yet compliance, fraud monitoring, capital provisioning, cybersecurity, and regulatory reporting all carry measurable costs. If a core financial service is offered at no charge, the obvious question becomes: how is it funded?

Revenue may come from interchange, cross-selling, float income, or data monetisation. None of these are inherently problematic. But misalignment between a provider’s revenue model and a customer’s long-term interests can erode confidence over time.

The question “How good can it be if it’s free?” is not rhetorical. It is structural. Sustainable economics enables sustained investment in compliance, uptime, and risk management. Underinvestment may not be visible immediately, but in financial services, weaknesses surface under stress.

From Compliance to Competitive Moat

Trust can no longer be viewed as a soft metric. It is measurable in capital inflows, in regulatory endorsements, in uptime statistics, and in audit outcomes. It influences valuation multiples and partnership decisions.

Institutions that deliberately design for transparency, embed control within infrastructure, and invest consistently in reliability will compound confidence over time. Those that rely primarily on aggressive pricing or superficial features may gain short-term adoption, but long-term retention is built on predictability.

In a more volatile global environment, the question facing financial leaders is shifting. It is no longer simply about how fast a product can scale or how cheaply it can be distributed. It now depends on the system’s ability to remain reliable under pressure.

From enhanced carbon capture at gas processing plants to grid modernisation and renewable energy storage, the technology reshaping the UAE’s oil and gas industry, has acquired a new dimension. As of the 2026, a significant portion of the research and development (R&D) behind it can be converted into a corporate tax credit of up to 50 percent under the country’s first dedicated R&D Tax Credit regime. According to Dhruva, a Ryan Affiliate, the opportunity for the energy sector is substantial, but the design of the regime rewards companies that act early and penalises those that treat it as a year-end exercise.

The regime was established by Cabinet Decision No. 215 of 2025 and made operational by Ministerial Decision No. 24 of 2026, issued on 18 March 2026. It applies to tax periods and fiscal years beginning on or after 1 January 2026, with the first claims expected in 2027. Credits are calculated on a tiered basis, rising from 15 percent to a headline 50 percent. Qualifying expenditure is capped at AED 5 million per qualifying entity or tax group per year, which produces a maximum credit of AED 2 million.

“The UAE’s energy transition has been told as a sustainability story and an investment story. From this year it is also a tax story. The work being undertaken to decarbonise hydrocarbon production, including enhanced oil recovery, carbon capture and storage, methane abatement, and the development of digital twins for processing plants, exemplifies the systematic, uncertainty-driven R&D that this regime is designed to reward. The catch is that the value sits in the documentation, and the documentation has to be built in real time. You cannot retrospectively reconstruct a year’s worth of R&D evidence in 2027,” said Nimish Goel, Leader, Middle East, Dhruva, Ryan LLC Affiliate.

For an industry as engineering-intensive as oil and gas, the central question is not whether qualifying activity exists. It is whether companies can tell the difference between routine engineering and genuine R&D, and prove it. Applying an established recovery method to a new reservoir does not, in itself, qualify. By contrast, systematically resolving technical uncertainty, whether relating to reservoir behaviour, materials performance under high-pressure conditions, the capture of CO₂ from sulphur recovery flue gas, or the integration of new digital control systems,  may qualify, provided the systematic experimentation and its outcomes are documented as the work is carried out.

“Two features will catch international energy companies off guard. Only R&D performed inside the UAE qualifies, and subcontracted R&D counts only when it is carried out by UAE-based third parties. Much of the sector’s historical R&D has run through global technology centres and group affiliates abroad. Companies will need to look hard at where their R&D actually physically takes place, before they assume they qualify,” said Fran Wilhelm, Associate Partner, Dhruva, Ryan LLC Affiliate.

The regime’s defining feature is a dual threshold that links the credit rate to both qualifying spend and headcount. The first AED 1 million of qualifying spend earns 15 percent and requires at least two R&D staff on average; spend between AED 1 million and AED 2 million earns 35 percent and requires at least six; and spend between AED 2 million and AED 5 million earns the top 50 percent rate and requires at least fourteen. Both conditions must be met for each band. Where the headcount falls short, the claim drops back to the highest band where both the spend and the staffing tests are satisfied. A minimum of AED 500,000 of qualifying expenditure applies to each R&D project.

This is where oil and gas companies face a structural choice that other sectors may not. R&D in the industry is often capital-intensive rather than people-intensive: a single carbon capture or enhanced oil recovery pilot can absorb millions in equipment and consumables while employing only a handful of dedicated researchers. Under the dual threshold, that profile caps the credit at the lowest band regardless of how much is spent. Reaching the higher rates means building R&D headcount physically in the UAE.

Pre-approval from the Emirates Research and Development Council is mandatory before any credit can be claimed, with no exceptions. No pre-approval means no credit, however strong the underlying scientific or technological uncertainty. Businesses must keep detailed technical records of objectives, methods, experiments and outcomes for at least seven years. The credit is also currently non-refundable, so it benefits companies that have a corporate tax or top-up tax liability to offset, which describes most established producers and service contractors in the sector. That said, it has been suggested that Phase 2 may include a refundable credit and an increase in both application and generosity, meaning all businesses should start planning ahead, irrespective of their tax position.

“Companies that map their qualifying projects now, secure pre-approval and build the evidence trail through the 2026 financial year will capture real value when claims open in 2027. Those that wait will find that the spend was eligible but the proof was never created. In this regime, the documentation is the asset,” concluded Nimish Goel.

Stefan Deiss, CEO and Co-Founder, The Hashgraph Group

The Middle East has moved faster on digital identity than almost any other region in the world. The UAE Pass now connects residents to more than 5,000 government and private services. Saudi Arabia’s Absher platform has issued over 28 million unified digital IDs. Dubai has gone fully paperless across 45 government entities.

But these systems were built for a world where the main challenge was convenience: getting citizens online, reducing paperwork, speeding up access to services. The threats they were designed to handle were stolen passwords, forged documents and basic impersonation.

What they were not built for is an environment where artificial intelligence can generate a convincing human face in seconds, clone a voice from a few minutes of audio, and inject a synthetic video feed into a verification check in real time.

What distributed ledger technology actually adds

Most digital identity systems today are centralised. Your credentials sit in a government or enterprise database, and every time your identity needs to be checked, the system queries that database. Sometimes that means scanning your face against a stored biometric template. Sometimes it means pulling up your document records and cross-referencing them. Either way, the process depends on one central store of information being secure, accurate and available.

The model works until it doesn’t. A single database holding millions of identities is a high-value target. An attacker who gets in does not compromise one person. They compromise everyone. And the tools available to attackers are improving fast.

The GCC fraud detection market has reached $1.2 billion. Deepfake attacks on identity systems are surging globally. In May, the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority published updated deepfake guidelines that explicitly recommend blockchain-based provenance systems to establish traceable records of original content. The guidelines identify identity impersonation through cloned voices and facial simulations as a major risk, and single out finance, politics and identity verification as sectors requiring priority monitoring.

This is the context in which distributed ledger technology becomes relevant. Decentralised identity flips the conventional model. Instead of credentials sitting in someone else’s database, you hold them yourself, in a digital wallet on your device. When you need to prove something, you present only the specific credential required. The verification is recorded on a distributed ledger, a shared record maintained across a network of independent computers rather than controlled by any single organisation. Nobody owns it, can alter it, and shut it down.

Then there are zero-knowledge proofs. This is a way of proving something is true without revealing the underlying information. You could prove you are over 18 without showing your date of birth. You could prove you hold a valid professional licence without disclosing your name or address. The verifier gets the confirmation they need. You keep everything else private.

There is no single database to breach. The individual controls what information is shared and with whom. And every verification event is recorded permanently, creating an audit trail that regulators, enterprises and individuals can each trust independently.

In Sharjah, decentralised identity infrastructure has been integrated across a smart city ecosystem, making it one of the first urban environments in the world where residents, buildings and services interact through digital credentials rather than centralised databases.

The physical presence problem

There is a further gap that even well-designed digital identity systems do not currently address: physical presence.

Identity verification today confirms who someone claims to be remotely. It checks documents, runs facial recognition, performs biometric matching. What it cannot confirm is that a real human being is actually sitting in front of the screen. A synthetic face, a cloned voice and an injected video feed can sail through remote checks that were designed for an era when faking a human was genuinely difficult. That era is over.

The technology to close this gap exists. Ultra-wideband radar, the same short-range spatial sensing found in consumer devices, can detect physical presence with sub-10-centimetre accuracy. It can pick up vital signs such as breathing and heartbeat as a liveness check. When that presence event is cryptographically bound to a decentralised identity credential and recorded on a distributed ledger, the result is a tamperproof record proving a specific individual was physically present at a given location at a given time, verifiable by any authorised party without exposing personal data.

The applications stretch across sectors. In transport, a traveller approaching a gate at an airport or train station could be verified instantly: identity confirmed, physical presence proven, the event recorded permanently. The same logic applies to stadiums, conferences, concert venues and any gated environment where ticket fraud is a problem.

Why the Middle East is the right place for this conversation

The UAE government has announced its intention to transition 50 per cent of federal sectors and services to agentic AI within two years. When AI agents begin autonomously processing licences, permits, compliance checks and cross-border transactions, the question of who authorised what, and whether a human was genuinely involved at the point of decision, becomes critical. Without a verifiable link between a physical person and a digital action, agentic AI systems become vulnerable to impersonation at a scale that manual fraud teams cannot monitor.

The region also has structural advantages that most other markets do not. Governments in the Gulf are bringing policy, investment and technology deployment together under unified national strategies. Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, the UAE’s digital economy strategy targeting 20 per cent of non-oil GDP by 2030, and the broader push toward smart city infrastructure all create an environment where new identity infrastructure can move from concept to deployment far faster than in markets weighed down by legacy systems and fragmented regulation.

What comes next

The digital identity systems the Middle East has built over the past decade are genuine achievements. But they were designed for a world where the person on the other end of a verification check was assumed to be real. That assumption is becoming less reliable every quarter.

The next generation of identity infrastructure needs to do three things. It needs to remove single points of compromise by decentralising how credentials are stored and verified. It needs to give individuals control over their own data through zero-knowledge proofs and selective disclosure. And it needs to prove physical presence at the moment of verification, closing the gap that synthetic media is already exploiting.

About the Author:
Stefan Deiss is Co-Founder and CEO of The Hashgraph Group (THG), a Swiss-based Web3 and AI technology engineering company specialising in enterprise solutions built on the Hedera network.

Stefan brings over two decades of experience in technology and business transformation. He spent 11 years at Orange Business Services before moving to Zurich Insurance Group, and went on to found his own consulting firm in 2013. In 2016, he co-founded The Hashgraph Group, which today operates globally with offices across Switzerland, Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong, and beyond.

Under his leadership, THG has developed a suite of enterprise products including TrackTrace for EU Digital Product Passport compliance, IDTrust for decentralised digital identity, and EcoGuard for sustainability and carbon markets. He is also co-inventor of CITI (Continuous Identity Trust Infrastructure), a patent-pending cryptographic framework that binds physical presence to digital identity.

Qashio, the MENA region’s leading spend management solution, is rewarding its UAE customers with exclusive FIFA World Cup 2026 fan experiences, including premium viewing access, interactive competitions, and hospitality benefits at Emirates Golf Club’s Footy Central in Dubai. The initiative gives customers the opportunity to experience a dedicated football watch party destination during the world’s biggest football tournament.

Running from 11 June to 19 July 2026, Footy Central will screen live matches alongside themed F&B, interactive games, family-friendly activities, competitions, and matchday entertainment. The programme builds on the global appeal of football’s premier event, which reached more than five billion viewers across all platforms during its previous edition, and reflects Qashio’s value proposition beyond spend management by turning client loyalty into tangible rewards and premium benefits.

The campaign will unlock exclusive access to selected matchday rewards and fan activations for Qashio customers, including F&B vouchers, matchday credits, Viya Points, gaming rewards, and VIP hospitality experiences. Viya Points, the digital reward currency within the Viya App ecosystem, can be redeemed across a premium lifestyle network of 400 venues, extending the value of the campaign beyond the matchday.

Guests can participate in the Ronaldo Header Challenge, where they can test their heading accuracy, while the FIFA Console Zone will host the PS5 FIFA Esports Challenge: Road to the Cup, with guests competing in head-to-head matches for leaderboard positions and daily rewards. Half-time engagement will include lucky draws during key matches, alongside Predict & Win competitions that reward guests for accurate match predictions.

Armin Moradi, CEO and Founder of Qashio, said: “Football is the most popular sport in the UAE among both Emiratis and the broader expat population, which makes the FIFA World Cup 2026 a powerful moment to celebrate with our customers. Qashio was built to help businesses manage spend with more control and value, and this campaign extends that promise by turning loyalty into memorable experiences for finance leaders and teams across the country.”*

The FIFA World Cup 2026 customer rewards campaign reflects Qashio’s broader approach to building a spend management platform that combines financial control with meaningful customer engagement. Through rewards, activations, competitions, and hospitality benefits, Qashio is continuing to create value for businesses beyond transactions, while giving customers new ways to engage with one of the most anticipated sporting events in the world.

For more information on the Footy Central experience and partnership opportunities, visit the link.

For much of the past decade, GCC banks operated in an environment defined by strong liquidity, rapid credit expansion and relatively stable macroeconomic conditions. Supported by high oil revenues and ambitious national growth agendas, the region’s banking sector became synonymous with resilience, scale and sustained growth.

That resilience has been tested in recent months and, so far, the sector has responded well. Recent banking data published by the Central Bank of the UAE (CBUAE) and the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) suggests that customer deposits have continued to grow despite heightened regional uncertainty.

Customer deposits increased by 17% year-on-year as of April 2026, and 2% from February to April 2026 in the UAE, while in Saudi Arabia, the growth in deposits was 11% year-on-year as of April 2026 and 2% from February to April 2026 , reinforcing both markets’ positions as regional safe havens for capital. Growth in monetary aggregates and non-resident deposits further suggests that regional and international investors continue to view GCC banking systems as stable, well-capitalized and resilient.

Importantly, there is little evidence so far of the capital flight or systemic liquidity pressures that some observers initially feared. Instead, the data suggests that the UAE and Saudi Arabia continue to play an important role as regional safe havens for capital, supported by strong banking fundamentals, prudent regulation and proactive central bank intervention.

Central banks have also played an important role. Proactive interventions helped preserve liquidity, support credit expansion and provide targeted relief to sectors facing short-term disruption. In the UAE, banks were able to extend working capital facilities and restructure short-term obligations for fundamentally healthy businesses, helping bridge temporary cash-flow pressures while maintaining confidence across the financial system.

As a result, resilience is no longer simply a measure of capital strength. It has become a strategic capability that underpins the sector’s ability to navigate an increasingly complex operating environment.

However, what is clearer than ever before is that the operating environment around banks is changing rapidly—and as a result, so is the role of the CRO.

The recent regional conflict accelerated that realization. Traditional stress-testing models were largely designed around financial shocks such as market volatility, liquidity tightening, and credit deterioration. What many institutions are now confronting is a far broader challenge, where geopolitical tensions, cyber threats, operational resilience, and credit risk can all influence one another simultaneously.
Across the GCC, this has prompted some banks to reassess whether existing business continuity and resilience frameworks are sufficiently equipped for a far more interconnected risk landscape.

This is particularly relevant in a region where regulatory frameworks have prioritized sovereignty, local data residency, and operational control. Recent events have also created an opportunity for institutions to reassess how these strengths can be balanced with greater operational flexibility and diversification, e.g., for digital data storage.

At the same time, a second structural shift is unfolding more quietly beneath the surface.

According to analysis from FTI Consulting, GCC banks originated close to $1 trillion in new lending between 2020 and 2025 across Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar. Much of this growth took place during a prolonged low-interest rate environment and elevated liquidity conditions, meaning many portfolios, particularly across real estate and mortgage lending, have not yet been tested through a full economic stress cycle.

That could create a more complex operating backdrop for the years ahead.
For banks, the longer-term risk is not simply operational disruption. While business continuity and cybersecurity remain critical priorities, credit risk remains equally important. If short-term disruption were to evolve into a prolonged economic slowdown, pressure could emerge across borrower segments and asset classes, particularly in sectors that have benefited from strong credit expansion in recent years. In certain scenarios, a meaningful correction in real estate markets would have implications not only for borrowers but also for portfolio performance and risk provisioning across the banking sector.

This is precisely the type of forward-looking scenario that CROs must now anticipate, rather than simply respond to.

Modern CROs are increasingly expected to balance resilience, growth, operational continuity and profitability simultaneously, while helping institutions navigate a far more dynamic and interconnected operating environment. More importantly, the CRO can no longer afford to be purely backward-looking.

The institutions likely to outperform over the next decade will be those capable of identifying disruption early, adapting faster and embedding risk intelligence directly into strategic decision-making.

That requires a fundamentally different approach to risk management. One built around predictive intelligence, integrated scenario planning, dynamic stress testing and real-time decision-making.

Artificial intelligence and advanced analytics are becoming increasingly important in that transition.

Some leading regional banks are already investing in AI-enabled underwriting, early-warning systems and advanced collections capabilities that allow them to identify stress signals earlier and make more sophisticated portfolio decisions in real time. Others, however, continue to rely on fragmented legacy systems, manual workflows and reactive operating models.

That gap may become increasingly important during periods of disruption. Institutions that can identify emerging stress earlier, underwrite more effectively and anticipate portfolio deterioration before competitors will inevitably benefit from lower risk costs and stronger resilience outcomes.

Because in this new environment, resilience itself is becoming a competitive advantage.

The banks most likely to succeed will not necessarily be the largest or most conservative institutions. They will be the organizations capable of integrating risk more directly into strategic decision-making, modernizing operational infrastructure and responding dynamically to an increasingly volatile external environment.

The broader lesson for the sector is clear.

The GCC banking industry is entering a new era where resilience can no longer be measured purely through capital strength or regulatory compliance. Increasingly, resilience will be defined by adaptability and the ability to proactively anticipate interconnected geopolitical, operational, technological and economic disruption in real time.

The UAE entered this space differently.

Digital payments were already widely used. Contactless behaviour was established. Consumers were comfortable using banking apps and wallets for daily transactions. The starting challenge was not introducing digital payments – it was making account-to-account payments practical enough to become part of everyday behaviour.

That distinction shapes many of the decisions behind Aani.

Aani was developed as part of the UAE’s Financial Infrastructure Transformation (FIT) Programme to enable instant account-to-account payments across banks, exchange houses, fintechs, and wallets through a common national infrastructure.

Today, more than 12.5 million users and 700 thousand merchants and SMEs are enrolled on Aani, through over 74 licensed financial institutions across the country.

Those numbers show reach, but reach alone does not create habitual usage.

People do not change payment behaviour because infrastructure exists. They change behaviour when the alternative becomes easier, faster, or more reliable within everyday situations. That is where account-to-account payments become more interesting.

One of the clearest examples is proxy-based transfers using mobile numbers. Users no longer need to exchange lengthy account details to send money. In April 2026, over 25,000 transfers were executed daily, just using mobile numbers. The behaviour itself is simple, but reducing friction at that level matters. Small reductions in effort often determine whether a payment method becomes occasional or routine.

The same applies on the merchant side.

For businesses, account-to-account payments create an additional way to accept digital payments, where money can be immediately transferred to the merchant’s bank account, simply using a QR code payment or sending a request to pay to the customer.  As merchant acceptance expands across the UAE, usage is gradually extending beyond person-to-person transfers into day-to-day commercial activity.

Most merchants and sole proprietors across the UAE are expected to accept Aani payments.

This shift is still developing, but it reflects a broader movement toward payment experiences that are immediate, simpler to initiate, and more closely connected to existing banking relationships.

Scale also depends heavily on ease of usage and reliability.

Consumers rarely adopt new payment behaviour because a standalone application exists. Usage grows when payment capabilities are integrated into tools people already use regularly. Aani services are available through mobile apps provided by their participating financial institutions, as well as through the Aani application itself, which means users can access instant payments within their existing banking apps rather than learning entirely new payment flows.

Achieving that familiarity required to reduce behavioural resistance is a key target that we keep in mind when developing any new product feature. Building a national payment capability is not only a technical exercise. It requires coordination across customer experience, operational readiness, dispute handling, fraud controls, onboarding journeys, and merchant acceptance. These are just some of the aspects that contribute to enhance the user experience and repeated usage of the payment scheme.

Another critical item is to ensure user experience consistency, across the various players in the ecosystem: while the infrastructure may be centralised, the customer experience is distributed across many institutions and channels.

That coordination becomes more important as payment use cases expand.

Current and upcoming functionalities will shape different expectations of the financial institutions and their end customers, being individuals or corporates, who are part of the ecosystem.

They will not just expect round the clock availability of services and speed, but also ease of usage, convenience, seamless experience, low cost of transactions and 

The harder measure of success is not whether transfers can happen in seconds. The infrastructure already allows that. The more difficult task is becoming efficient and seamless enough that the behaviour repeats without conscious effort. That is usually when payment systems become part of daily life rather than simply another available option.

By Raj Kamal

I have spent the better part of two decades in payments. I have watched the industry move from cash to card, from card to mobile wallets, from domestic rails to real-time systems. And I can say with some confidence that what happened quietly in 2025 belongs in the same conversation as those transitions. The difference is that this one was mostly invisible to the people who usually lead that conversation.

The Numbers Deserve Context

Before we get too far, there is a legitimate caveat worth addressing upfront. Not all of that $33 trillion represents the kind of payment activity you might imagine, a supplier invoice settled in Dubai, a remittance sent from a worker in Sharjah to a family in Karachi. A McKinsey and Artemis Analytics report from early 2026 stripped out trading activity, DeFi cycling, and internal fund shuffling and found roughly $390 billion in what they called “genuine end-user payments.” That figure, they noted, more than doubled from 2024.

So the honest version of the story is this: even on the most conservative read, genuine stablecoin payment activity doubled in a single year. And on the broader rails measure, stablecoins have now outscaled the world’s two largest card networks. Both of those things are true simultaneously. The volume growth is also not speculative froth. It is coming from businesses.

An EY-Parthenon survey of 350 corporate and financial institution executives found that 62% of current stablecoin users are using them specifically to pay suppliers. Ship brokers. Steel traders. Import-export businesses. These are treasury teams who found a faster, cheaper way to move money across borders and adopted it without waiting for permission from the mainstream financial narrative.

Why It Happened Quietly

Part of the answer is timing. The growth of stablecoin payment infrastructure coincided almost perfectly with a period of intense negative sentiment around cryptocurrency broadly. Bitcoin volatility, exchange collapses, regulatory battles in the United States, all of it generated enormous noise. Underneath that noise, a parallel financial infrastructure was being quietly assembled.

The other part of the answer is that stablecoins solved problems that the payments industry had been struggling with for years. Cross-border payments through correspondent banking networks are slow, opaque, and expensive. A typical international B2B transfer can take two to three days and lose 3-6% to fees and foreign exchange costs. Stablecoins settle in seconds, operate 24/7, and carry transaction costs that are a fraction of the traditional alternative. When you frame it that way, the adoption curve makes complete sense.

The incumbents noticed. Stripe acquired stablecoin infrastructure provider Bridge for $1.1 billion and launched stablecoin payment acceptance across more than 100 countries. Mastercard acquired BVNK, a stablecoin infrastructure firm, in March 2026. Visa settled $4.5 billion annually in stablecoins as of January 2026 and is integrating USDC into its core settlement operations. These companies are not making billion-dollar bets on a trend they expect to reverse.

The UAE Is Not Playing Catch-Up

This is where it gets specifically relevant for this region, and where I would push back on anyone who assumes the Middle East is watching from a distance.
The UAE has spent the last two years building regulated stablecoin infrastructure with a seriousness that few jurisdictions globally can match. The Central Bank of the UAE issued its Payment Token Services Regulation in mid-2024, establishing a comprehensive framework requiring 100% reserve backing for payment tokens and creating clear licensing pathways. This is not a sandbox experiment. It is a formal financial regulatory structure.

In October 2024, AE Coin became the first fully licensed AED-pegged stablecoin, issued through a partnership with Al Maryah Community Bank. In January 2026, the CBUAE registered USDU, the country’s first USD-backed stablecoin, with reserves held onshore at Emirates NBD, Mashreq, and Mbank. In December 2025, ADNOC Distribution signed an agreement to accept AE Coin across nearly 980 service stations across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. That is one of the largest retail deployments of a regulated payment token anywhere in the world.

At the same time, the UAE’s domestic payment systems processed more than AED 20 trillion in transfers in just the first ten months of 2025. The country is consistently among the world’s largest sources of outbound remittances, with a workforce that sends money to families across South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Africa every month. The friction in that system is exactly what stablecoin rails are designed to remove.

What Payments Veterans Should Take From This

I am not suggesting that traditional payment rails are disappearing. Visa and Mastercard are actively integrating stablecoins rather than being displaced by them, which is itself a significant signal about where the industry is heading. The more important observation is about infrastructure decisions being made right now, in this decade, that will determine which payment corridors are competitive in the next one.

The UAE’s approach, regulated frameworks, onshore reserve requirements, licensed issuers, interoperability with the Digital Dirham, is a serious attempt to capture a structural moment rather than react to it. Stablecoin transactions by value are projected to exceed $50 trillion in transaction volume in 2026 alone. Five to ten percent of cross-border payments globally are expected to run on stablecoin rails by the end of the decade.

The shift happened while people were arguing about whether crypto was real.

About the Author:
Raj Kamal is Founder and CEO of TransFi, a cross-border payments and stablecoin settlement infrastructure company that has processed over $1 billion in payment volume across Asia, MENA, Africa, and Latin America.

As Islamic finance enters a new phase of growth, the focus is shifting beyond expansion towards stronger governance, greater transparency, sustainable finance, and digital innovation.

In this exclusive interview with Charlotte Robins, Managing Director, Policy & Legal, DFSA, she discusses the regulatory priorities shaping the future of Shari’a-compliant finance within the DIFC and beyond.

How do you see the Islamic finance sector evolving within the UAE and the wider region over the next few years?

The UAE is a leading global market for Islamic finance. According to the Islamic Finance Development Indicator (IFDI), the UAE ranked fourth globally by assets and third based on financial performance and supporting ecosystem metrics in 2024. Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) is currently one of the world’s largest venues for the issuance of Sukuk, with more than USD 100 billion of outstanding Sukuk listings, including in relation to Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG).

Against this backdrop, the Dubai Financial Services Authority’s (DFSA) approach has been to support the continued development of the Islamic finance sector within DIFC by ensuring that its regulatory framework remains clear, proportionate, and aligned with market developments. This approach aligns with broader national and emirate-level objectives, including the UAE Strategy for Islamic Finance and Halal Industry and Dubai Economic Agenda D33, which aim to strengthen the UAE’s position as a global hub for international Islamic finance.

Within the Centre, we are seeing continued activity across Sukuk issuance, Takaful, asset management, and fintech solutions involving Shari’a-compliant structures. ESG considerations are also becoming increasingly relevant within Islamic finance, particularly in the Sukuk market, where investors are placing greater focus on disclosures, governance standards, and the credibility of sustainability-related claims.

We expect the Islamic finance sector to continue evolving alongside broader changes in global financial markets, particularly in relation to sustainability, digitalisation, and capital markets activity.

This includes supporting innovation whilst maintaining appropriate standards around governance, disclosure, investor understanding, and market integrity.

What developments in the market made this the right time to revisit and enhance the regulatory framework?

As the Islamic finance sector develops, products, business models, and delivery channels are becoming increasingly diverse. The DFSA’s approach has been to support the continued development of the Islamic finance sector within DIFC by ensuring that its regulatory framework remains clear, proportionate, and aligned with market developments. This includes addressing areas where greater regulatory clarity or consistency is needed for firms operating in the sector, which we have sought to provide in Consultation Paper 172 (CP 172), in which we propose enhancements to the DFSA’s Islamic Finance Rules Module.

The proposals are intended to provide greater clarity on when an Islamic endorsement is required and strengthen Takaful disclosure requirements. They reflect our broader approach of reviewing the regulatory framework periodically to ensure it remains proportionate, responsive to market developments, and aligned with international standards and best practices.

How important is regulatory clarity in encouraging further growth and innovation in Islamic finance?

Regulatory clarity is fundamental to supporting sustainable market development and innovation. Firms need to understand clearly how regulatory requirements apply to their activities, particularly as Islamic finance products continue to evolve and intersect with areas such as fintech, tokenisation, and sustainable finance.

Clear frameworks also support investor confidence. Clients should be able to understand the nature of the services they are receiving, how products are structured, the governance arrangements supporting Shari’a compliance, and the associated risks. This is one of the key objectives behind CP 172. The proposals seek to provide greater certainty around when firms require an Islamic endorsement and strengthen disclosure expectations for Takaful products. Together, these measures are intended to support clearer regulatory expectations, stronger investor understanding, and greater market confidence.

How do stronger disclosure standards contribute to confidence and trust within the Islamic finance ecosystem?

Disclosure standards play an important role in supporting transparency, investor understanding, and market confidence. This is particularly important in Islamic finance, where clients may wish to understand not only the financial characteristics of a product, but also how Shari’a-related features and governance arrangements operate in practice. In the case of Takaful products, for example, clients should be able to clearly understand how fees are calculated, how surplus-sharing arrangements operate, and whether additional contributions may be required.

The proposals in CP 172 therefore strengthen disclosure requirements for Takaful products to support better investor understanding and consumer protection outcomes. More broadly, consistent and credible disclosures are becoming increasingly important in areas such as ESG Sukuk and sustainable Islamic finance instruments, where investors are placing greater focus on transparency and sustainability-related claims.

Looking ahead, what areas of growth or transformation do you expect to define the next phase of Islamic finance?

We expect several themes to shape the next phase of Islamic finance development including:

The continued growth of sustainable Islamic finance, particularly ESG Sukuk and other products that combine Shari’a-compliant structures with sustainability-related objectives. As this market develops, disclosure quality, governance standards, and investor transparency will remain increasingly important; and

Digitisation, where we are observing increasing interest in Shari’a-compliant fintech solutions, including from issuers exploring the digitalisation and tokenisation of the Sukuk issuance lifecycle. Tokenisation can improve efficiency through faster settlement, enhanced transparency through distributed ledger technology, and broader investor accessibility with fractional ownership which enables smaller investors to participate – whilst maintaining Shari’a compliance requirements.

At the DFSA level, our focus will remain on maintaining a clear, proportionate, and internationally aligned regulatory framework that supports responsible innovation, investor confidence, and the continued development of Islamic finance within DIFC.

BY SRIJITH KN FOR FINANCIAL INTEGRATOR

Over the past few years, investor participation across the region has evolved beyond speculative trading activity into something far more structured, technology-driven, and institutionally aligned. Retail traders are becoming increasingly sophisticated, expectations around transparency and execution quality are rising, and financial platforms are under pressure to offer far more than simple market access.

The speculative frenzy that once defined large parts of retail trading is gradually giving way to a more measured investor mindset, shaped largely by regulation, financial awareness, and long-term wealth preservation rather than short-term market excitement.

In this changing landscape, brokerage firms are no longer positioning themselves purely as trading providers. Instead, many are beginning to evolve into broader financial ecosystems, combining infrastructure, education, technology, regulatory credibility, and long-term investment access into a single platform experience.

For UAE-based firms such as Traders’ Hub Capital Markets, this shift represents more than market expansion. It signals a transformation in how the region’s next generation of investors may engage with financial markets altogether.

Founded in 2022 and headquartered in Abu Dhabi, Traders’ Hub has rapidly positioned itself as a locally regulated, technology-enabled brokerage focused on transparency, multi-asset access, and client-centric trading infrastructure.

Today, the company offers access to more than 2,000 instruments across forex, commodities, equities, indices, and cryptocurrencies, while simultaneously preparing for a broader move into wealth management and long-term investment services.

But the story surrounding Traders’ Hub is not simply about growth.

It is also about the wider evolution of the UAE’s financial ecosystem itself.

THE SHIFT IN UAE INVESTOR CULTURE

Across the GCC, financial participation is changing shape.

The rapid rise of digital platforms, increasing financial literacy, regulatory modernization, and mobile-first investing have fundamentally altered how younger investors interact with markets.

In parallel, the UAE has continued strengthening its position as a regional financial hub, attracting capital, fintech innovation, institutional activity, and globally mobile investors seeking regulated access to international markets. This transformation has also created new expectations.

Today’s investors are increasingly prioritising transparency, regulatory protection, execution quality, multi-asset accessibility, and seamless digital experiences.

In many ways, expectations around trading platforms are beginning to resemble expectations traditionally associated with banking and wealth management institutions.

According to Michael Barbour, Head of Product Implementation at Traders’ Hub Capital Markets, these changes reflect a deeper transformation in investor behaviour itself.

“Investors increasingly seek integrated, trustworthy financial ecosystems prioritising long-term value, convenience, and institutional-grade service.”

Over the past five years, the psychological profile of the UAE investor has gradually shifted from short-term speculation toward a far more informed, disciplined, and globally aware mindset. Earlier retail participation was often driven primarily by leverage, speed, and short-term market movements. Today, however, younger investors across the UAE are becoming more research-driven, risk-conscious, and focused on long-term wealth creation rather than impulsive trading behaviour.

Modern traders are also seeking far more than market access alone. Transparency, educational support, analytical tools, platform stability, and institutional credibility are becoming increasingly important components of the investor experience itself.

FROM SCOTLAND TO GULF CAPITAL MARKETS

Long before helping shape the growth trajectory of Traders’ Hub Capital Markets, Michael Barbour’s early ambitions were far removed from financial markets.

Growing up in Stonehaven, a small Scottish town south of Aberdeen, he originally aspired to become a professional footballer, eventually playing semi-professionally before moving into finance.

His early exposure to financial systems came during the 2008 financial crisis while working within the legal and asset management sector in Scotland, assisting major UK banking institutions in managing distressed real estate portfolios during one of the most volatile periods in modern financial history.

That experience, combined with his later move to the Middle East in 2011 and subsequent years at the Dubai Gold and Commodities Exchange (DGCX), helped shape a perspective grounded not only in trading infrastructure, but in how markets behave under pressure, uncertainty, and rapid transformation.

Today, that institutional perspective continues influencing Traders’ Hub’s broader focus on operational credibility, technology infrastructure, and long-term investor engagement across the UAE market.

BUILDING A LOCALLY ROOTED TRADING PLATFORM

One of Traders’ Hub’s strongest positioning advantages lies in its status as a UAE-regulated Category 1 Capital Markets Authority (CMA) licensed broker, one of the highest licensing classifications within the country’s financial ecosystem.

In a market where offshore platforms have historically dominated retail participation, regulatory credibility has become increasingly significant, particularly as investors grow more conscious of operational risk, fund protection, execution transparency, and long-term platform reliability.

Rather than positioning itself through aggressive speculative messaging, Traders’ Hub appears to be building its identity around institutional-grade infrastructure, operational discipline, and client alignment.

Its trading environment is built around a Straight Through Processing (STP) execution model, meaning trades are routed directly to liquidity providers rather than internally warehoused by the broker itself.

In increasingly crowded financial markets, brokerage differentiation is no longer being shaped purely by leverage offerings or execution speed. Investors across the UAE are becoming far more conscious of pricing transparency, liquidity structures, operational credibility, and how trades are ultimately executed, particularly as financial literacy continues maturing across the region.

According to Michael Barbour, many investors still misunderstand how brokerage models differ operationally, particularly around spreads, slippage, pricing structures, and conflicts of interest between market-making and STP environments.

For Barbour, transparency itself is becoming a defining factor in long-term investor confidence.

Modern investors are also becoming more selective around how brokers disclose execution policies, fee structures, liquidity relationships, and client fund protections. In many ways, execution architecture itself is increasingly becoming part of the trust equation.

For regulated regional firms such as Traders’ Hub, this shift may ultimately represent a broader advantage. As investor sophistication continues evolving across the UAE, operational credibility and institutional transparency are beginning to matter as much as platform functionality itself.

FROM BROKERAGE TO FINANCIAL ECOSYSTEM

The transition from Traders’ Hub Currency Brokerage to Traders’ Hub Capital Markets reflects more than a naming evolution. It signals a broader ambition to position the company as a longer-term financial institution within the UAE’s evolving investment ecosystem.

Globally, the distinction between trading platforms, investment platforms, and wealth management ecosystems is beginning to blur. Increasingly, investors no longer want fragmented financial experiences spread across multiple platforms. Instead, they are seeking connected environments capable of combining active trading, long-term investing, financial planning, analytics, and educational support within a single ecosystem.

For Traders’ Hub, this transition also reflects an effort to solve a longstanding regional friction point: the difficulty many UAE investors face when moving between active trading and structured long-term wealth accumulation.

“The modern investor no longer wants isolated trading access. They want a complete financial environment,” says Barbour.

The company’s planned expansion into wealth management and broader investment services reflects a wider regional shift toward more integrated financial participation models.

TECHNOLOGY, AI, AND THE NEXT INVESTOR EXPERIENCE

As trading platforms become increasingly automated and algorithmically assisted, the financial industry is also confronting a deeper question: how much of investing should remain human?

Technology is rapidly becoming the defining layer of modern financial platforms, from AI-assisted analytics and mobile-first investing experiences to increasingly sophisticated execution infrastructure.

But while automation can enhance speed and efficiency, long-term investing still remains deeply shaped by human behaviour itself. Markets continue being influenced by fear, overconfidence, emotional reaction, and risk perception, factors technology alone cannot fully eliminate.

One potential differentiator for firms such as Traders’ Hub may therefore lie in how effectively they balance algorithmic intelligence with human judgement.

EDUCATION, TRUST, AND LONG-TERM ENGAGEMENT

As trading participation expands across the GCC, financial platforms are increasingly carrying responsibilities extending far beyond market access alone.

While digital platforms have lowered barriers into global financial markets, they have also intensified conversations around behavioural investing, financial literacy, emotional discipline, and long-term risk awareness.

Increasingly, sustainable platform growth may depend not only on user acquisition, but on trust, transparency, and investor education itself.

In the GCC particularly, where retail participation continues expanding rapidly, financial firms are beginning to recognise their role in shaping long-term investor behaviour and financial understanding.

THE NEXT PHASE OF REGIONAL FINANCE

The UAE’s financial landscape is evolving rapidly.

As regulation strengthens, investor sophistication increases, and technology continues reshaping how capital moves through markets, financial platforms and capital markets institutions are being forced to rethink what they represent within the broader financial ecosystem.

The company’s broader direction, spanning infrastructure investment, wealth management expansion, AI integration, mobile accessibility, and educational initiatives, reflects a wider regional transition toward more mature, technology-enabled financial participation.

 Barbour believes the future of finance will increasingly belong to intelligent platforms capable of combining technology, trust, education, accessibility, and long-term wealth creation into a unified experience.

Whether this next generation of financial platforms ultimately succeeds will depend not only on execution speed or product breadth, but on something far more enduring: trust.

And in an increasingly crowded financial landscape, trust may ultimately become the most valuable asset of all.

From jewellery and luxury watches to family heirlooms, legal documents, precious metals and collectibles, extended periods away from home can heighten concerns around security, accessibility and long-term protection. For residents, expatriates, investors and frequent travellers, secure storage during travel in the UAE has become an increasingly important part of responsible asset protection.

Vintage Vaults provides private safe deposit box rental in Dubai for individuals, families, collectors and business owners seeking a modern, discreet and service-led alternative to conventional safety deposit boxes. Combining advanced security infrastructure with premium client experience, the facility has been designed for clients who value privacy, convenience and peace of mind.

Located within Mall of the Emirates, Vintage Vaults offers client access during mall operating hours, 365 days a year. The facility operates within a 24/7 monitored security environment supported by UL-certified vault infrastructure, biometric authentication, controlled access systems, AI-powered surveillance, CCTV monitoring, motion detection technology and advanced alarm systems. It is also directly connected to Dubai Police and SIRA-linked monitoring systems, further strengthening its security framework.

Clients can choose from seven safe deposit box sizes ranging from XXS to XXL, accommodating a wide variety of assets including jewellery, watches, gold, cash, legal documentation, family archives, artwork and collectibles. Every box comes with complimentary insurance coverage, with protection of up to AED 2 million depending on the selected membership tier.

“Dubai has become home to a growing number of individuals and families who have accumulated significant personal and financial assets over the years,” said Sherif El Haddad, Founder and CEO of Vintage Vaults. “At the same time, we are seeing greater mobility, with people travelling more frequently, spending extended periods abroad, relocating between countries or managing assets across multiple markets. Accordingly, secure storage is becoming an essential part of responsible asset management, particularly during periods when people are away from home.”

Vintage Vaults offers three membership categories — Silver, Gold and Black — providing varying levels of insurance coverage, security features, box access nominees and premium services. Clients also benefit from private consultation and access rooms designed to maintain discretion, alongside a multilingual team trained in security, privacy, client service and asset protection.

For clients requiring additional support, the facility offers premium services including chauffeur arrangements, armoured transportation and bodyguard assistance, creating a comprehensive asset protection ecosystem tailored to high-value holdings.

According to Imran Shoukat Khan, Co-founder and Managing Partner of Vintage Vaults, demand for private vault services is being driven by a broader shift in how residents and expatriates think about protecting their assets.

“Today’s clients expect more than storage. They want confidence that their valuables are protected by robust infrastructure, supported by technology and managed with complete client discretion,” said Imran. “Whether someone is travelling for several weeks, relocating internationally or safeguarding assets for future generations, secure private vault facilities provide essential storage with , protection against theft, damage or loss along with peace of mind.”

The summer season presents a timely opportunity for UAE residents and expats to review how their valuable possessions are stored and protected. For many, a safe deposit box in Dubai offers a practical solution for securing jewellery collections, investment-grade precious metals, luxury watches, important family documents and sentimental heirlooms before extended travel or temporary relocation.

As one of the few independent private safe deposit box operators in the UAE not affiliated with a bank, Vintage Vaults offers a level of discretion, flexibility and service that traditional banking institutions may not provide. By combining advanced security standards, complimentary insurance coverage, flexible storage options and premium client services, Vintage Vaults continues to provide a trusted destination for clients seeking long-term asset protection in one of the world’s most dynamic wealth centres.