Fintech has become an important component of the economic strategies of Middle Eastern governments in the past five years, as a means of delivering increasingly efficient financial services while boosting domestic innovation and investment. The six states of the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — have all developed or are developing high-level strategies for fostering fintech ecosystems, combining progressive regulations with generous sandbox and accelerator programmes.
In spite of such an approach, the Arabian Gulf has yet to see the launch of a genuine challenger bank akin to the UK’s Monzo or Nubank of Brazil, with ‘digital-only’ banking limited to the offerings of the region’s established banks.
