mena-fintech
(11)
Abhi
Abhi is a MENAP embedded-finance company that started by letting salaried workers draw wages they have already earned before payday, and has grown into a full stack of employer-facing tools - earned wage access, payroll processing, payroll financing and invoice factoring - plus its own microfinance bank in Pakistan. Founded in 2021 by Omair Ansari and Ali Ladhubhai and backed by Y Combinator (S21), it now serves over a million people across thousands of companies in Pakistan, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Oman, and was the first MENAP fintech named a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer.
FinFlx
FinFlx is a Dubai-based fintech that helps UAE companies forecast, fund and manage their employees' end-of-service gratuity in line with local labour law. Its platform automates gratuity calculations for HR and finance teams, lets employers park those liabilities in a segregated, professionally managed fund, and gives employees an app with a flexible savings account paying a guaranteed 4-5% return. Founded by Amr Yussif and Matthieu Capelle after Yussif's own gratuity was withheld, FinFlx went through Y Combinator's W22 batch and is regulated by the FSRA in Abu Dhabi Global Market.
Democrance
Democrance is a Dubai-based B2B insurtech that sells insurers a lightweight, cloud-based core platform - Democrance Pulse - which sits on top of legacy systems rather than replacing them. Founded in 2015 by Michele Grosso, Alberto Perez and Dr. Damian Dimmich, the company began by trying to sell low-cost microinsurance to people in emerging markets who had never held a policy, then discovered that the real bottleneck was the insurers' own technology. Today its no-code product configurator, distribution portals, underwriting engine and API library let carriers including AXA, MetLife, AIG, Manulife, Zurich, Tokio Marine and Sukoon launch and administer life, health and P&C products in days rather than months, across 15-plus markets in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Latin America. The mainstream book cross-subsidises the microinsurance one, which is how a financial-inclusion mission survives contact with a P&L.
Fuze
Fuze is a Dubai-based digital asset infrastructure company that lets banks, fintechs, and enterprises across MENA and Turkey offer regulated crypto and stablecoin services through a single API. Its stack spans Digital Assets-as-a-Service, an OTC trading desk, stablecoin payment rails, embedded trading, and custody, all built on regulated, compliant infrastructure. Licensed by Dubai's VARA and holding a Retail Payment Services license from the UAE Central Bank, Fuze has onboarded hundreds of institutions and processed billions in digital asset volume since its 2023 launch.
HALA
HALA is a Riyadh-based fintech building the 'bank of the future' for small and medium enterprises across Saudi Arabia and the wider MENA region. Founded in 2018 by Esam AlNahdi and Maher Loubieh, it combines business IBAN accounts, card issuance, POS and soft-POS payment acceptance, expense management and SME financing into a single platform regulated by the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA). HALA serves more than 140,000 businesses, processes over $8 billion in annual transactions, and in September 2025 raised a $157 million Series B - one of the largest fintech Series B rounds in the Middle East - at a reported valuation near $900 million.
inyad
inyad is a Moroccan-founded fintech building mobile-first software for small and micro merchants across Africa and the Middle East. Its apps - the Konnash digital ledger and the Mahaal all-in-one point-of-sale, invoicing and payments platform - help corner shops, cafes, salons and independent traders move their bookkeeping, sales and payments off paper and onto a phone. Founded in 2018 by former McKinsey consultant Moncef Chlouchi, the company reports a user base in the millions across 10-plus countries and has raised roughly $14M from investors including Partech, Al Mada Ventures, CDG Invest and FJ Labs.
Klickl
Klickl is a regulated Web3 open-finance platform headquartered in Abu Dhabi that bridges traditional banking and digital assets. Founded in 2017, it offers crypto trading, custody, payments, multi-currency accounts, cards and OTC services under licenses from Abu Dhabi's ADGM, Poland (VASP/EU) and the US (FinCEN MSB). In December 2024 it raised a $25M Series A at a $125M valuation to expand across the MENA region and other emerging markets.
Malaa | ملاءة
Malaa (ملاءة) is a Riyadh-based fintech that became Saudi Arabia's first licensed open banking product. Its consumer app lets people link all their bank accounts in one place, track spending, and invest in Shariah-compliant, professionally managed portfolios at what it says is the lowest management fee in the Kingdom. Founded in 2020-2021 by Ali Alorainy and Faisal Alqarni, Malaa is regulated by both the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) and the Capital Market Authority (CMA), and raised a $17.3M Series A in 2024 led by SNB Capital.
MNT-Halan
MNT-Halan is an Egyptian fintech that digitally banks the unbanked and underbanked across emerging markets. Founded by Mounir Nakhla, it combines microfinance, consumer and business lending, buy-now-pay-later, mobile wallets, payments and an FMCG/appliance e-commerce marketplace into a single app, all powered by its proprietary Neuron core-banking technology. It became Egypt's first fintech unicorn in 2023 and now operates across Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan and the UAE, having disbursed billions of dollars in loans to millions of customers.
NymCard
NymCard is an Abu Dhabi-based embedded finance and payments infrastructure company that lets banks, fintechs, telecoms and enterprises launch and run card programs, lending and money-movement products through a single API-first platform called nCore. Founded in 2018 by Omar Onsi, it owns its issuing and switching technology rather than licensing it, is licensed by the Central Bank of the UAE, and is a certified partner of Visa and Mastercard across the Middle East, North Africa and Pakistan.
Tarabut
Tarabut (formerly Tarabut Gateway) is the MENA region's first and largest regulated open banking platform, connecting a network of banks and fintechs through a universal API. Founded in Bahrain by Abdulla Almoayed and now headquartered in Riyadh, the company provides banking-as-a-service, embedded finance, account-to-account payments, and data-driven credit tools that let financial institutions and businesses build personalized financial products across Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain.