From MNT-Halan to Zeepay, digital pioneers are building a high-value corridor to the Middle East.
As African fintech matures, companies that once focused on domestic markets are now increasingly seeing Dubai as a strategic base for MENA and international expansion.
Some key players are already on the move. Egypt’s fintech giant MNT-Halan recently launched in Dubai with salary-financing products, while Paymob Technologies has expanded across the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Oman — securing a full UAE Central Bank license last year. Nigeria’s Innovate1Pay runs global operations from Dubai’s Jumeirah since 2019. Lagos-based Flutterwave, one of Africa’s first and fastest-growing fintech unicorns, will soon be the latest to set up shop in the UAE after expanding into Saudi Arabia and Bahrain in 2024.
Gulf Remittance Corridor
A key driver of this expansion is the remittance corridor between the Gulf and Africa. Researchers estimate that between 3 million and 5 million African migrants now live and work across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), including large Egyptian, Sudanese, Ethiopian, Kenyan and Ugandan communities. According to the World Bank, global remittances to Africa reached $109 billion in 2024. About a third comes from the GCC, but a lot of transfers remain unrecorded in national data sets.
Currently, a lot of the money still moves around in cash, through operators such as Western Union, MoneyGram or Gulf exchange houses, where the cost for sending funds averages between 8% and 9% — among the highest in the world.
This opens a clear opportunity for lower-cost digital alternatives. A recent Visa study found nearly two-thirds of UAE residents now prefer digital apps over physical locations for sending money abroad. Key drivers include ease of use (50%), followed by safety, privacy and speed (46%). Cashless solutions are heavily encouraged by most GCC governments to increase compliance, traceability and transparency.
Some companies like Zeepay, a Ghana-based payment firm that already operates in 25 countries, are gearing up to tap into that market and the recent war in the Middle East is far from deterring their motivation.
“For us, it’s a new chapter. We are eager to make an impact and become the remittance solution in the Gulf,” said Kojo Amofa, Partnerships Manager at Zeepay. “Many migrant workers want to send money home, and the current volatility creates an even more drastic need that we want to answer.”
For Zeepay, the UAE is the natural entry point. It is the MENA region’s most mature tech hub and the world’s third-largest remittance sender — sometimes described as a financial “switchboard” for Africa-bound flows. To make its first steps, the company is looking for partnerships with digital payment firms already located in Dubai or Abu Dhabi, who would be interested in trying out an African remittance corridor.
“We need to test the appetite. Rather than entering a market we are not native to, we prefer collaboration so that our services can be tried out,” said Amofa. “Once there is a significant level of interest, we can then start to explore creating a physical presence.”
Sovereign Wealth Interest
While exploring options in the GCC, the teams at Zeepay, like many African startups, are also keeping an eye open for funding opportunities.
In 2025, African Fintechs raised $1.5 billion across 150 deals, according to data from global investment platform Partech Partners. A growing number of deals involve GCC investors as sovereign wealth funds and family offices from the UAE and Saudi Arabia are increasing their exposure to African assets. In the past decade, GCC countries have invested more than $100 billion in the continent.
In 2022, Nigeria’s Moove.io — a mobility fintech that provides car loans and operates a green ride-hailing platform — raised a $30 million private credit sukuk arranged by Franklin Templeton Investments in Dubai. It later opened an office in the UAE to oversee its MENA expansion.
More recently, Kenya’s iconic fintech M-Pesa has teamed up with the UAE-based ADI Foundation to explore blockchain. The partnership gains significant weight from ADI’s parent company, IHC — a $240 billion giant chaired by the UAE president’s brother.
Future Growth Markets
For Gulf investors, the appeal is straightforward: Africa remains the fastest-growing fintech market globally, with revenues projected to rise thirteenfold to $65 billion by 2030, according to Boston Consulting Group. For now, digital payment tools still dominate, but the next phase is expected to center on small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) finance, credit, and broader digital banking services.
In the medium-long term, a Gulf–Africa fintech corridor is taking shape, with companies scaling up and capital circulating between the two regions. In the short term, there are some regulatory bottlenecks and geopolitical challenges ahead. The war in the Middle East might slow down Gulf investments for a while as governments prioritize spending money at home.
