MENA Fintech Market - Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, and Forecasts (2021 - 2026)

Fintech adoption rates are growing around the world. According to EY, 64 per cent of global consumers use FinTech – with the rate as high as 87 per cent in China and India. Banks in MENA have also embraced fintech although compared to fintech hubs, such as in Europe, Asia, and North Africa, have historically lagged. But there have been evident examples and the pandemic further cemented the importance of incorporating all aspects of a contactless and digital customer experience. FinTech founders have reported difficulties while applying for a banking license and navigating the stringent regulations to enter the marketplace.

The Covid-19 pandemic and the corresponding health measures have changed customer behavior immensely. As people sought to make less physical contact, the demand for contactless paying services grew strongly in 2020. In the GCC, neo banks have started to appear – banks themselves have started to launch in addition to independent companies operating separately from traditional banks. Clear examples of those include Liv Bank (owned by Emirates NBD in Dubai) and Bahrain-headquartered Bank ABC’s ila Bank. Africa has seen similar innovations with neo banks mainly around independent ones separate from traditional banks

USD 26 million was ploughed into MENA-based insurtech start-ups in 2019 – the highest amount in any year in recorded history. The insurance premiums market in MENA stood at USD 57billion in 2018, providing a large addressable market for insurtech start-ups. The top five funded insurtech companies were all based in the UAE. Therefore, in the Middle East, the success of the UAE presents more opportunities for insurance and insurtech to grow. Even within the UAE, where most low-income workers are not insured, potential insurtech solutions could help close those gaps. Africa is generally less developed than more advanced economies and this is reflected in the insurance industry where penetration is some of the world’s lowest, according to a report from Deloitte. For example, despite much activity in fintech in Nigeria, the country’s insurance penetration is a lowly 0.4 per cent. Indeed, for much of Africa generally, a combination of factors – from the low income of customers to the large unbanked sector – has resulted in relatively low insurance levels

Key Market Trends

Increase in Technology Usage And Adoption Across Domains

By 2030, Saudi Arabia’s vision is to become the place where the best of data and AI is made a reality. Under the strategy, Saudi Arabia will implement a multi-phase, multi-faceted plan that includes skills, policy, and regulation, investment, research, and innovation, as well as ecosystem development. Under the strategy, Saudi Arabia will implement a multi-phase, multi-faceted plan that includes skills, policy, and regulation, investment, research, and innovation, as well as ecosystem development. AI can contribute an estimated USD 135billion to its GDP, which corresponds to 12.4 percent of the national GDP.

MENA - A Growing Fintech Ecosystem

It is worth noting that MENA has produced quite a few unicorns although its proportion is relatively small in comparison to the world’s share. In addition, the tech scene with respect to unicorns is concentrated in the Middle East, especially Israel and the UAE. At present, the UAE is home to only one unicorn – Emerging Markets Property Group (EMPG), funded by OLX Group, KCK Group, and Exor Seeds – while Israel has seven. In Africa, there were only three unicorns in 2018, according to a research report – Nigeria's Jumia and South Africa's Promasidor Holdings and Cell C. Compared to much of the rest of the world, MENA showcases a strong concentration within key regions such as in Israel and the UAE for the Middle East and Nigeria, Egypt, Kenya. Nonetheless, the scale compared to the rest of the world at present is less. In addition, compared to more established tech communities, such as Silicon Valley in the US or London in the UK, MENA still has much to develop in its ecosystem – from funding to wider tech support to other innovations.

Competitive Landscape

Companies across the world have huge investments in this segment of the market. In MENA the FinTech market has many companies fragmented over minor shares. Tamara, Liv., Pepper, PayTabs, Tabby, Sarwa are amongst the FinTech Companies.

Adoption of FinTech platform and up-gradation to new Technology leads to increasing competition amongst the company. Innovation and technological advancement taking a pace as the COVID-19 and urbanization strike general people to the adoption of the new ease in payment and contactless payment gateways.

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• The market estimate (ME) sheet in Excel format
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