Jun 23, 2026 · 34 min · 9 segments
Mobile payments in emerging and mobile-first markets are no longer a peripheral layer of digital commerce — they are becoming core infrastructure. With mobile money ecosystems already processing…
Isik UmanGuest
Riccardo AmatiHostNo entities detected.
First question, mobile affects consumers' behavior in the Middle East and Africa.
According to me, there's a strict difference between the Western perception in a classical way about what is mobile first and what is mobile first in Middle East and Africa.
So basically, we are trying to put retrospectively everything we are talking today in a mobile first concept when we are referring to the, let's say, civilized part of the world.
I would say we simply bypassed the digital evolution, the previous phases of the digital evolution, and we were born into it where we always thought that connectivity was the real product.
So as of now, having the mobile phone screen or any mobile device screen is not a secondary or complementary option for most of the people in the Middle East and Africa.
when it comes to commerce and the payments, because even in Middle East, if you exclude some of the GCC region, I would say the banking penetration together with the cars is only Around 10%.
And the mobile phones are the only thing that you can use as an intermediary for the digital commerce and the payments.
So the United States, West Europe or Europe itself has a different story, right? It started with the internet, the fixed internet, web, etc.
But even before the internet or digital commerce, there was some kind of, let's say, electronic payment options where you were using your credit card, etc.
Okay, how does it push financial inclusions? How did you see that happening in the last years?
Even though it's a very fragmented region, we can still treat them as a kind of a common ground with respect to common characteristics of the region.
If you look at the sub-Saharan Africa, as far as I remember, the mobile wallets and mobile money is the main thing that we are providing to end users to be included in the financial system one way or another.
First question, mobile affects consumers' behavior in the Middle East and Africa.
According to me, there's a strict difference between the Western perception in a classical way about what is mobile first and what is mobile first in Middle East and Africa.
So basically, we are trying to put retrospectively everything we are talking today in a mobile first concept when we are referring to the, let's say, civilized part of the world.
I would say we simply bypassed the digital evolution, the previous phases of the digital evolution, and we were born into it where we always thought that connectivity was the real product.
So as of now, having the mobile phone screen or any mobile device screen is not a secondary or complementary option for most of the people in the Middle East and Africa.
when it comes to commerce and the payments, because even in Middle East, if you exclude some of the GCC region, I would say the banking penetration together with the cars is only Around 10%.
And the mobile phones are the only thing that you can use as an intermediary for the digital commerce and the payments.
So the United States, West Europe or Europe itself has a different story, right? It started with the internet, the fixed internet, web, etc.
But even before the internet or digital commerce, there was some kind of, let's say, electronic payment options where you were using your credit card, etc.
Okay, how does it push financial inclusions? How did you see that happening in the last years?
Even though it's a very fragmented region, we can still treat them as a kind of a common ground with respect to common characteristics of the region.
If you look at the sub-Saharan Africa, as far as I remember, the mobile wallets and mobile money is the main thing that we are providing to end users to be included in the financial system one way or another.
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