The future of cross-border payments will depend as much on how financial institutions work together as on the technology they deploy. That was the message running through the fourth Future Cross Border (FXB) Payments Summit, held at the Anantara Downtown Dubai
The summit, founded by Shafique R Ibrahim and run by the events platform Fintership, brought banks, exchange houses, fintechs, payment providers and regulators together for a single day of panels and keynotes. Its supporting partners included the UAE Banks Federation, the Foreign Exchange and Remittance Group (FERG), Al Etihad Payments and Swift. The Fintech Times’ events correspondent Phil Smith was in attendance, and this summary draws on his notes from the day.
The agenda ranged across instant payments, artificial intelligence, digital assets, compliance and financial inclusion. In most sessions, the question was less whether the technology works and more how institutions, jurisdictions and regulators join it up.
A regulator that co-authors innovation
Adeeb Ahamed, Managing Director of LuLu Financial Holdings, credited the UAE’s supportive regulatory environment and its ability to attract international talent for the country’s rise as a financial innovation hub.
“The regulator has been a co-author for innovation here,” he said, pointing to the willingness of UAE authorities to back new business models.
His view of what comes next centred on partnership rather than building everything in-house. “I’m a great believer of partnerships. I believe that the future lies in partnerships,” he said. “Build what is necessary, and then find partners who can help you scale.”
On artificial intelligence, Ahamed described a human-in-the-loop approach at LuLu Financial Holdings. AI is being used to make areas such as compliance and auditing more efficient, while people retain oversight and customers keep control over their own financial decisions.
Taking instant payments across borders
Domestic instant payments have moved quickly in the UAE, where Al Etihad Payments operates the Aani instant payments platform. Carrying that speed across borders is a harder problem, and it was the focus of a panel with Andrea Cianchetti, Chief Product Officer at Al Etihad Payments, Roberto Mancone, CEO of du Pay, and Omer Farooq, CEO of Blue Remit.
Once a payment leaves the country, it meets foreign exchange conversion, settlement, differing regulatory requirements and the challenge of making separate systems interoperate. The panel’s view was that the domestic progress is real, but the international leg still carries most of the friction.
A separate session, Who Owns the Cross-Border Experience?, moderated by Muhammad Waqar Ashraf of Swift, asked who is accountable when a payment passes through several hands.
“The real challenge is moving value across institutions, jurisdictions and, of course, currencies,” said Nawal Kebouri Ammor, Group Head of Financial Institutions at Al Ansari Financial Services. She pointed to the differing settlement arrangements, liquidity requirements and regulatory frameworks that continue to complicate cross-border transactions.
Panellists also stressed that the experience of the person receiving a payment matters as much as that of the sender, particularly when the money moves through several financial institutions before it arrives.
Digital assets over the next 24 months
The practical use of digital assets was another focus, with speakers from Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA), RAKBANK, the Dubai Digital Asset Association and Fuze looking at what the next two years are likely to bring.
Stablecoins and tokenised money offer an alternative route for international settlement and money transfers. The panel was clear, however, that wider adoption will depend on regulatory clarity, liquidity and compatibility with the financial infrastructure banks already run. Speakers returned several times to the need for regulators, financial institutions and technology providers to work together as digital assets move into mainstream financial services, a point with particular weight in a city that set up a dedicated virtual assets regulator in 2022.
Financial inclusion beyond access
Syed Muhammad Ali, CEO of myZoi Financial Inclusion Technologies, focused on the lower-income workers who still rely heavily on cash, despite near-universal smartphone ownership in the UAE.
When myZoi began operating, more than 90 per cent of the salaries paid into its accounts were withdrawn in cash. Two years later, that figure had fallen below 50 per cent.
“The margin for error is non-existent,” Ali said. Many of these workers send a substantial share of their earnings home, so a single failed or delayed transfer can do lasting damage to trust. For this group, reliability is what drives digital adoption, not access alone.
Collaboration and competition
The summit also examined how the relationship between traditional institutions and technology-led providers is changing. Hasan Fardan Al Fardan, CEO of Al Fardan Exchange, took part in a leadership discussion on the roles each will play in cross-border payments, a theme he had set out ahead of the event: that progress depends on linking innovation with interoperability, governance and trust.
That framing carried through the wider discussion, as banks, exchange houses and fintechs described adapting to a payments landscape in which no single institution controls the full journey of a transaction.
By the close, the consistent challenge was turning technological progress into measurable improvements for consumers and businesses: international payments that are faster, cheaper, more transparent and more dependable. Those are the same four measures in the G20 roadmap for enhancing cross-border payments, coordinated by the Financial Stability Board, which sets its targets for cost, speed, transparency and access to be met by the end of 2027.
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