Subscribe to join the Money20/20 Middle East community and receive weekly fintech insights, industry updates and expert perspectives direct to your inbox.

Welcome to Xchange by Money20/20 Middle East – where money meets ideas 

Bold thought:

Long before decentralised finance had a name, migrant workers built it – one payday at a time. 

Snapshot 

Every few seconds, somewhere in the GCC, a worker taps send on a mobile app. A few minutes later, a family in Kerala, Cairo, or Kampala receives the funds. People moving value, peer to peer.

That’s decentralised finance in its purest form; and now, regulatory innovators and fintech leaders are exploring ways to use the infrastructure of DeFi to streamline remittances. 

Remittances to low- and middle-income countries reached USD $656 billion in 2023, according to the World Bank; climbing past $685 billion in 2024. But the average transfer still costs 6.4% in fees – that’s roughly $40 billion in friction every year.

Nowhere feels that tension more than the GCC. The UAE and Saudi Arabia together send more than $130 billion a year abroad (Thunes, 2025). These corridors (to South Asia, East Africa, and the Levant) are the perfect proving ground for a new, inclusive, programmable form of money movement.

No hype. Just better rails. 

Voices 

Mark Lenhard (CEO, Zepz):

“Cross-border communities have been navigating decentralised finance long before we gave it a name. Remittances succeed because they absorb complexity and match how people transact locally. The lesson for new infrastructure is that adoption depends on serving real people in communities, not just building faster rails.”

What to watch and do 

• Watch: The UAE’s token regulation and SAMA’s CBDC pilots. Both could cut cross-border settlement from days to seconds.
• Watch: New licensing waves (like Wise’s UAE approval) as signs that fintech and banks are now competing at the infrastructure layer.
• Do: Audit your partnerships. The next remittance advantage will come from rails.

Further reading…

• Migration and Development Brief 40 – World Bank, 2024
• G20 Remittance Cost Target Update – FSB, October 2025
• CBUAE Payment Token Services Regulation – Central Bank of the UAE, 2024
• Powering Payments in the Middle East – Thunes Insights, 2025

We want your take 

We’re always looking for voices to share in this newsletter. If remittances were the original P2P, what’s the next piece of financial plumbing ripe for reinvention?

Open this newsletter on LinkedIn and share your perspective in the comments.

Catch you next week,
The Money20/20 Middle East Team