From Islands to Infrastructure Borderless Financial Services

Thank you. Well, welcome to all of you. This is quite the challenge. We've got a big topic, 25 minutes to do it, but I know you guys are up for it. So in order to just set the stage on the expertise we've got on this stage right now, I want just in a single sentence what your company's superpower is in building this vision.

I have to start with our customers which we have 200 million of them and our superpower is to make the best doctor to be in Dhaka as a superhero. The best teacher to be Islamabad as a superhero and make sure that the local language Udu Punjabi Bengali LLMs make that agentic transformation. Barry.

Yes. At Radium, we uh provide trust technology that operates at the center of markets. Our partners and customers are central banks, sector regulators, and we power open finance initiatives globally, including here for the central bank of the UAE. And to put that in context, we secure every transaction between every consumer, between every bank and fintech every day. Uh and it's very large scale stuff.

So, it's very exciting. This is Murat from Network International and our superpower is I guess we are operating in 56 markets through licenses from central banks working together with more than 260 banks and financial institutions and truly settling in multiple currencies which is a good enabler for borderless payments and operating with $400 billion of payments volume in the region. All right, last but not least, Vibore.

Hi, good evening everyone. Uh, this is Viborehor from Neopay, a large regional payments company. I would say our superpower is, uh, we listen to our customers. Uh, we innovate boldly and, you know, we have the agility to build in payment solutions at the pace at which, you know, the industry and the, you know, payment methods are changing. So, I would say that's our superpower.

So, since we're here at ADFW, I want to just pick up on Barry's word trust. I mean, that is the underpinning of all financial services, borderless or otherwise. So, given your work, especially here in the UAE, tell us what can the rest of the world learn from how the UAE is doing this?

Sure. So the UA has set a new benchmark by essentially investing in a national open finance platform called Altar and they're building the infrastructure that's going to secure consent to data sharing for every consumer and every bank and fintech and insurer. Uh we've been working for the last two years. It's being rolled out right now. Um it's a 5-year program.

Um and they've coupled that with a very modern uh accreditation licensing framework that makes market access quite straightforward. uh and they're encouraging uh a fintech market to develop here and they're bringing uh there's been quite successful in attracting um fintexs to come to the region to establish uh the UA as a modern uh financial services sector around fintech and to really grow that.

Morat, do you want to add to that? Um I moved to UAE around a year ago and um this gives me some chance around comparison. My past is banking and finance but in other parts of the world. Um the one thing that that I think changed everything is the vision and the clarity of the vision and the ability to execute that vision and being able to provide the platforms so that the people who are executing that vision can really work on it. I'll give you some examples.

TAM is um a combination of more than 1100 government services in one platform. You don't see t a lot in other parts of uh the world and the output of that is immediately a small business can come to the country and then they can open shop pretty fast. U pass as a digital identity is another example of it. So these are very good examples in terms of where we are in and then the and the market that we are in.

Vibore your take.

So I think uh I would add to that I mean we are talking about borderless commerce. So I think UAE also leads in terms of using the payment infrastructure and driving you know global commerce around it. So if you see there are multiple uh payment rails that work uh hand inhand in the country your traditional card rails UAE has just launched its own instant payment solution along with that you know players like Neopay power a lot of uh global payment solutions like Alip payche UPI from from India all of this interoperate together and now it's becoming the hub for uh you know digital assets and uh crypto payments as well and there's a clear regulatory framework that drives all this. So for for companies like ours there's certainty in terms of how we build these products and solutions and for consumers there is trust and you know there is a you know a long-term play despite the fact that a lot of these payment methods are emerging. So I would say that standardization along with the right regulatory framework to drive adoption and acceptance is again something that can be picked up from the UAE

and Khan your perspective. So it's been uh one year that we moved our headquarters from Amsterdam to Emirates and uh currently we are the largest NASDAQ listed company headquartered in Emirates as well. Very proud of that. But what I have seen is access to talent, access to capital, logistics and being treated by the government by a as a customer is unique and you know the bottle caps are not attached to the bottle as well. So this is a fantastic place to do business.

All right. So we know what the UAE is doing right now. As we kind of zoom out and try to scale this globally, I'm wondering what are what are the biggest potential roadblocks that you see and how can AI help to solve it? I mean you cannot have a conversation without AI these days, right? So who would like to tackle the first one?

Do you want to start Barry?

Sure. Um so the biggest challenge is probably data frameworks, privacy frameworks and the harmonization of those across jurisdictions. That is problematic because it requires sector regulators and policy authorities to sort of uh collaborate closely. Um however there are um there is greater convergence now on data exchange standards that are dominating across several global markets as the sort of deacto way to share data in a consented way. And there are initiatives such as uh the bank of international settlements a perta project uh which we're pleased to be leading on essentially looking to bridge open finance networks across borders for data portability.

Uh there are five inscope markets currently uh Brazil, the UK, the UAE, Hong Kong and India. And we are building that right now. We've been working on it all year. Uh we're about to do live testing with real institutions across those markets to show that it is possible to have data portability for various use cases um across uh different markets and to essentially uh provide transnational trust technology and also a translation layer currently to be able to translate payloads uh from different standards in the origin market into the destination market. So that's a very real example of something that's going on right now and we see great prospects for that to be um extended into a pilot and to roll that out commercially.

Quick followup, what is the timeline on this? It sounds like we need more convergence. What do you see as the timeline?

Well, we've been working on it for a year. The project's been in conception for probably two, if not more. Um it it requires collaboration with a steering committee of of central banks and sector regulators like the Bank of Central in Brazil, the FCA in the UK etc. the CBUA here. Um and that collaboration that co-creation to solve for these problems.

We've got two use cases to start with which is trade finance sort of bills of lighting and and letters of credit uh which don't currently uh benefit from common standards really and otherwise it's account opening formemes and businesses which is typically quite problematic as you move between jurisdictions but it's really uh future proof around any potential use case. Um so I think this could become a real possibility um in the coming year or so. Yeah, we're building it right now. It's a live thing. you're going to be able to test and use it.

Um, and it's going to work.

And for you, Khan, what would you say is the biggest potential roadblock

in today's world? Success depends on a person's a companies, a leader's ability to deliver on multiple objectives, which can actually be potentially be conflicting 180 degrees apart. for example, eradicating poverty versus creating shareholder value. And I believe AI is the real superpower in these days because when you are trying to provide financial inclusivity in a country like Pakistan and when you want to give 200,000 nanol loans every single day if you are not able to differentiate a mother trying to buy flour, eggs, sugar, cook some cookies and sell it on the market versus somebody else who is trying to just finance their next sports betting. you are going to fail the same way you know unless we are able to create local language models in Udu in Punjabi in Bengali in Usbek in Kazak and make sure that we focus on making that agentic capability accessible by a doctor by a teacher by a young mother I think it's impossible to deliver in in between these conflicting objectives and I believe you know our role as a as a digital services company which also happens to have mobile licenses in five countries is to drive this transformation.

All right board.

So I would say for us um you know the the challenge is uh building trust at scale. You know you would have heard through this whole day the amount of payment methods that are coming up that especially in the UAE and the region you have your traditional rails you have instant payments now you have digital cryptocurrencies etc right so how do you build trust at scale and I think in that AI plays a critical role and for payment companies like ours for example Neopay uh we are investing heavily on using AI to you know manage fraud risk build trust on a transaction uh because you know agentic commerce is going to be a reality and you you will need more and more seamless payments across multiple payment methods. So how do you ensure you know you have trust around that and you know you add on to the power of quantum computing which is becoming more and more viable. So you're always fighting with fraudsters who have that capability. So how do you be one up over them?

So I think that that is a place where you know we could use AI to to build more trust. Yeah. All right, Morad, I'm going to give you the last word. Is you are the digital highway. Where do you see the bottleneck?

Um, when you think about borderless payments, it means that I should be able to send money anywhere in the world like it's one country,

right? That's the definition more or less. So, network international is in 56 countries. We are licensed to operate in those countries and it's an established company with $400 billion of volume. But the moment that one of my customers wants to go outside of Middle East and Africa region, it could be to Europe, it could be to US, I am exposed to new regulations.

Um so as we all know there are regulatory frameworks that are separate from each other and there are country dynamics that are different from each other as well because the digitization journey and appetite of the countries are different too which means that for for players like us who's trying to be the borderless payments enabler for the whole world it takes a lot of time and energy to build it globally that I see as the main challenge uh so Okay. Well, you know, I'd like us to fast forward three to five years because it feels like things are happening more and more quickly and the future is now. So, what is your boldest prediction for this space? I mean, feel free to give a tangible example. What does it look and feel like?

And I'm going to start on the end there again with you, Khan. Look, I see a a great trend for integrating terrestrial networks for with space platforms. And that practically means that irregardless wherever a person is, whether in the top of a mountain, in a desert, in in a completely remote area, we will be able to deliver AI capabilities and deliver services, world-class services at a fraction of a cost in multimodel environments with voice and video. And that will require of course deploying a very low latency network and being able to deliver those services.

Barry,

sure. Um I think we can safely predict that we're going to move way beyond open banking, right? That was just the beginning. And we're going to see a much wider adoption of cross- sectoral data sharing with consumers consent across much more sectors, energy, telecommunications, property, etc. leading to a really connected digital economy powered by data, structured data.

And I think that coupled with um Agentic AI and other AI based models uh and the compute that's going to be online by then I think that's a very powerful combination for hyperpersonalized digital experiences.

All right. Um I think in my area aentic commerce is uh is one big trend that's coming and um the way that we we see it at this point is that our clients are going to be able to tell their personal LLM or personal agent that pay my bills for this month and then we will see that that that robot that agent talking to the other agent of the utility uh agency and then they're going to finalize that that uh that interaction and transaction together and the more important thing is it seems like it's going to happen globally at the same time which means it's going to be very in line with borderless payments objective of the world as well

uh so I would I would just add on to what Morat is saying I I truly believe that uh commerce is going to be done by AI agents and not by individuals and uh it's not even 5 years away I believe it's just a couple of years away because simply because you know you have all the right things going to enable that uh you know your payment credentials are now tokenized uh there are regulatory frameworks clearly defining how you uh you know authenticate on behalf right AI literacy is percolating so I think what's going to happen is for companies like ours we'll need to be ready to you know accept payments from agents and more importantly uh an agent is going to fight another agent from a you know authentication perspective fraud management perspective And uh marketing will move away from you know really building uh you know experiences or marketing campaigns for you know consumer behavior but more you know how an agent would you know behave which is backed by so much data. So I think agenting commerce is here. UAE just launched a pilot. Global big boys are coming onto it. Walmart OpenAI just signed a deal you know a month back.

So that's something to watch out for. Yeah. Well, this is certainly an exciting picture that you have painted for us. We have just about five minutes left. I'm wondering, what do you think is the single most important action a company can take today to prepare for this exciting tomorrow?

Look, um this is the first Abu Dhabi finance week I'm attending and I understand that this is the fourth one and I'm impressed in terms of efficiency here. I think if I look back the last four years, we made some important decisions in our company's life, including after the war, exiting from Russia, investing in Ukraine, listing KF Star in NASDAQ. But what I look back, I see that moving our headquarters to here, being closer to talent, capital, efficiency, and an effective regulator was one of the best. And I think each company needs to reflect on this and be in a place where they can do business without hurdles and unnecessary burdens.

Barry, I see you nodding there.

Sure. Just building on that, I think um number one priority for any major corporation is to get ready uh and to build the AI ready foundations for Agentic AI and to make sure that your data is in good order. it's well structured uh in terms of core data and that you've got the capabilities to be able to secure agents who are going to act on behalf of consumers and businesses sort of autonomously with their consent control. So you're going to need to be able to manage that, right? These are ephemeral.

They are spawning and they're going to interact directly with and on behalf of consumers. How are you going to control that in the future which is kind of upon us is some of the big problems that we are solving right now um and we're quite excited about. So that's the number one priority I see

in our in our case our u the businesses or the financial institutions that we serve they are already accepting payments in multiple currencies and they are already settling in multiple countries but what is the next what is next for us is just building that into a single API so that wherever they go it would be a single integration instead of taking a few weeks it's going to be immediate for them that's going to enable eliminating any any account that they hold in anywhere because it's their settlement into their account immediately. So it's it's about it's about again building a borderless payments option for them but this time through a one-click API that they can use anytime.

Okay. And Vora I know you have something to add to this.

No I think u AI obviously everyone is talking about AI and how that is used. I think companies need to be ready. What I believe is there's a lot of noise around AI. So, you know, you need to be ready to identify what are the areas where you would invest in uh because you know, executives can get lost in in the multiple options that that that exists for you know payment companies like ours. There are certain areas which are very clear right one um you know get I get AI ready or at least AI native talent in in our development to you know not just build cooler products but to ensure the software development life cycles are crunched and we have seen you know we have been able to do that by around 25 to 30%.

or you know use AI for like for example fraudless payments in terms of picking up the right payment methods when you are orchestrating a transa orchestrating a transaction or use it for fraud and risk management. So I think each company needs to choose which are the areas that that you really need to invest in because you can get lost. So that's would be my two cents on it.

That's certainly true. But I thank you for each of your insights for helping us not to get lost as we build this borderless financial feature. So thank you so much.

Might as well.

Thank you.

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