Source: Based on my personal experience and recent trends in the GCC, such as the 2025 partnerships announced by major regional banks at the Dubai FinTech Summit.
In today’s interconnected financial world, collaboration is the new competition. The days of siloed operations are over. As we’ve seen throughout 2024 and 2025, the most significant leaps in FinTech have come from strategic partnerships between agile startups and global financial powerhouses. Recent headlines from events like the Dubai FinTech Summit 2025 are full of such alliances, demonstrating that this model is now the norm.
My past negotiations with global giants like Visa, Mastercard, and Western Union laid the groundwork for this new era of cooperation. The key wasn’t to compete with them but to find where our local expertise and innovative platform could add unique value to their global networks. For instance, our partnership with Western Union allowed us to combine their vast remittance network with our user-friendly digital platform, creating a seamless, best-of-both-worlds experience for our customers.
The blueprint for a successful partnership remains the same:
- Find a clear, symbiotic value proposition.
- Navigate the cultural and operational differences with respect and transparency.
- Be a trusted local partner who understands the unique regulatory and market dynamics.
The future of finance is a distributed network of alliances. By building bridges with global players, we not only scale our own innovation but also help integrate the GCC into the global financial ecosystem.