Fintech Market Entry Playbook for Middle East & Africa

Launch new financial products across Middle East & Africa with confidence and compliance.

Decode regulatory expectations

Each supervisor across Middle East & Africa has nuance. Build a library of licensing requirements, outsourcing obligations and reporting templates early.

Maintain a living tracker of questions asked in sandbox sessions so product teams adapt quickly.

• Design compliance guardrails alongside product discovery.
• Create escalation paths to risk and legal stakeholders.
• Schedule pre-launch audits with internal teams.

Localise acquisition and onboarding

Conversion hinges on trust. Align messaging with pain points customers face in UAE, Saudi Arabia and Kenya markets.

Instrument onboarding to capture drop-offs and fine-tune KYC requirements without hurting approval rates.

• Invest in vernacular creatives and support.
• Co-create journeys with distribution partners.
• Track cost-to-serve by segment from day one.

Prepare for scale

Stress-test servicing, collections and fraud ops before the hockey-stick moment.

Document playbooks so new teams across Middle East & Africa can replicate launches quickly.

• Align SLAs across internal and outsourced squads.
• Automate dispute management to keep regulators happy.
• Set up quarterly growth and compliance retros.