Happy Friday friends 👋

Thought fintech announcement season was in the rearview mirror? Think again.

Indian fintech unicorn PhonePe, which raised funding at a $12 billion valuation in 2023 and counts Walmart, General Atlantic and Tiger Global among its backers, has secured initial approval for two UAE payment licences. The large Indian diaspora on these shores offers an obvious starting audience, although its plans stretch further with the company’s international payments chief outlining ambitions across wallets, remittances and merchant payments, with, you guessed it, underserved SMEs a particular focus.

Paymob, meanwhile, has raised a $35 million pre-Series C co-led by Mubadala and EBRD, with the GCC now approaching half of the Egyptian payments company’s revenue.

Elsewhere, Huspy has crossed the Rubicon into Italy with its acquisition of Integra Finance, with plans to invest $86 million in its fourth market, barely a week after buying Dubai luxury brokerage LuxuryX, Saudi defence-tech investor MASNA Ventures has asked the CMA for permission to expand its fund from $100 million to $150 million, as it accelerates investment in autonomous maritime systems, and Saudi’s CMA proposes tighter listing rules to combat recent underwhelming public market performance.

We’ve also published our deep dive with Enhance CEO Tarek Mounir, on an accidental US expansion, why software is becoming a route back into services, and the rise of the forward-deployed personal trainer.

One diary note before we get into it. Next Tuesday, September 29, we’re hosting a live conversation with RemotePass co-founder and CEO Kamal Reggad on what actually breaks as companies start hiring across MENA. Join us at 3pm UAE, or register and we’ll send you the recording afterwards.

As always, if you're enjoying our coverage, please support our ability to grow by becoming a premium subscriber for only $9.99 a month. Or if you'd prefer to bring the whole team along, check out our new group plans here.

This and much (much) more below 👇

This week’s round-up is a 7 min read:

Next Tuesday, September 29th, FWDstart is hosting a live conversation with RemotePass CEO and Co-founder Kamal Reggad, where we’ll cut through the BS and get down to brass tacks on what hiring across MENA actually looks like as you start expanding your team across the region.

Kamal knows what he’s talking about, having spent the past few years building RemotePass into a platform used to hire, manage and pay teams across 150+ countries, supporting 35,000+ workers and more than $800M in cross-border payroll.

📅 Tuesday, September 29
⏰ 3:00–3:45pm UAE | 2:00–2:45pm KSA

Can’t make it live? Register anyway and we’ll send you the recording afterwards.

Paymob (🇪🇬 Egypt), a payments infrastructure company serving more than 390K merchants across MENA, has raised $35M in a pre-Series C, co-led by Mubadala and EBRD, with participation from British International Investment, Global Ventures and DPI Ventures.

Bekia (🇪🇬 Egypt), a recycling platform connecting households and waste collectors with businesses buying recyclable materials, has raised $765K in a Seed round led by Madica, with participation from Catalyst Fund and Jambaar Capital.

TalMal (🇸🇦 KSA), a fintech offering salary-linked purchasing with repayments organised through employers, has raised an undisclosed pre-Seed round with participation from MM Partners.

AREP (🇸🇦 KSA), an edtech combining lab training with a marketplace for scientific equipment and supplies, has raised an undisclosed pre-Seed round led by Golden Assets Investment.

Rela (🇸🇦 KSA), a workforce-accommodation platform managing housing, bookings and occupancy for employers, has secured an undisclosed strategic investment from Yazeed Al Rajhi & Brothers Holding.

Dhimam (🇸🇦 KSA), a fintech providing digital escrow services that hold payments until agreed transaction conditions are met, has closed an undisclosed angel round.

Independent reporting, deep dives and analysis on the companies, investors and markets shaping technology across MENA.

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📱 Walmart-backed PhonePe has secured in-principle approval from the UAE central bank for two payment licences, covering retail payment services and card schemes, and stored-value facilities. The Indian payments giant has raised more than $2B to date, with backers including General Atlantic, Tiger Global, Microsoft and Qatar Investment Authority. The approvals mark its first international regulatory footprint, although final authorisation is still needed before commercial operations can begin. PhonePe plans to work with regional banks, licensed payment providers and local technology companies on its UAE rollout.

🌐 Saudi Arabia has left the China-led mBridge cross-border digital-currency project, the FT reported on Sunday, revealing a departure that followed the completion of SAMA’s proof of concept in May 2025. The platform connects central banks for digital-currency payments, and the UAE remains a participant. Saudi Arabia’s withdrawal follows the BIS’s departure in 2024, leaving the project without two former participants. SAMA says its involvement ended as planned.

🏠 Huspy, the Dubai-born proptech which combines mortgage brokerage and property sales with software for agents and mortgage advisers, has acquired Italian credit intermediary Integra Finance and plans to invest $86M in Italy, extending the mortgage acquisition strategy it previously used in the UAE and Spain. Integra brings more than 160 advisers and over 50 banking, financial and insurance partners, giving Huspy a local network on which to deploy its tech. Italy is its fourth market, and Integra its fifth acquisition in credit intermediation. The deal follows last week’s acquisition of Dubai luxury brokerage LuxuryX. Huspy says it’s raised approximately $200M from investors including Sequoia, Balderton, Founders Fund, Fifth Wall and COTU. The price paid for Integra wasn’t disclosed.

🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia’s CMA has proposed tighter IPO rules as listings slow and several prominent tech names trade well below their debut valuations. Jahez is worth around SAR 2.4B, just over a quarter of its SAR 8.9B IPO market cap, while Nice One is at roughly SAR 1.3B, about a third of its SAR 4B listing valuation. Insurtech Rasan remains a conspicuous exception, trading well above its IPO price. Under the proposals, institutions would have to show they can fund their book-building orders, underwriting commitments would start before book-building, and issuers would disclose forecasts and financial-performance indicators. Consultation closes on October 22.

🛡️ Saudi defence-tech investor MASNA Ventures has asked the CMA to lift its fund capacity from $100M to $150M, accelerating investment in autonomous maritime systems. As we reported at its February launch, MASNA initially planned around 10 investments in US and allied defence companies, spanning drones, counter-drone systems, precision-guided munitions and AI, while helping them manufacture in Saudi Arabia. Co-founder Lucien Zeigler previously led MENA investments at Pilatus Capital. The strategy supports the Kingdom’s target to localise 50% of defence spending by 2030. The Sharia-compliant fund is anchored by an unnamed Saudi family office, with all committed capital so far coming from Saudi nationals. MASNA is considering international LPs, although Zeigler declined to disclose individual commitments or investor identities.

📦 Amazon has denied reports that it is moving regional operations from the UAE to Istanbul, telling Arabian Business that both countries remain priority markets and that it continues to expand and invest in each. The claim originated in Turkish business newspaper Ekonomim, which cited unnamed industry sources saying that much of Amazon’s regional business had shifted from Dubai. The report also suggested Google could follow. It pointed to AWS’s launch of an Istanbul Local Zone in May, which lets customers run applications and store data locally. Amazon’s UAE cloud business dates back to its 2022 infrastructure-region launch, backed by a planned $5B investment through 2036.

🤖 Saudi startup Nero has secured a permit for autonomous delivery vehicles in public neighbourhoods, starting in Riyadh’s Al-Falah district. The company says it is the first Saudi business to receive such a permit. Its offering includes a fleet-management dashboard that lets businesses remotely monitor vehicles, trips and team performance, alongside delivery success rates and journey times. That software component has parallels with CargoX’s fleet platform in the UAE, which coordinates and monitors autonomous deliveries. Nero appears to be targeting short trips from local shops and dark stores to customers within the same neighbourhood.

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🦾 Dubai-based Stone Venture has led a Series B for Chinese robotics company GENISOM AI, reported at several hundred million yuan. The deep-tech investor has been building a portfolio of Chinese robotics and autonomous-driving companies, including LimX Dynamics, Neolix and Momenta. GENISOM makes quadruped and humanoid robots for industrial inspection and emergency response, with overseas expansion targeting energy, oil and gas, and security customers. Neusoft, Highpower Technology and Riying Electronics also joined the round; the exact amount and valuation were not disclosed.

🇶🇦 QIA and JPMorgan Asset Management have announced a preliminary $20B investment partnership, split between $15B in customised global equity portfolios and a $5B private-markets initiative providing senior financing to US middle-market companies. The private-markets component gives the Qatari sovereign investor another channel into US corporate credit, alongside a much larger public-equities allocation. It follows QIA’s January agreement to expand its partnership with Goldman Sachs, targeting $25B in investments.