Fintech has spent years racing toward speed, but the industry must now shift its focus from movement to architecture to truly offer financial freedom, writes Faisal Toukan, CEO and co-founder of Ziina.
Fintech has spent years racing toward speed. Faster payments. Cheaper transfers. New rails built on old foundations. But the real question now is quieter and far more important.
Is any of this actually improving people’s financial lives or bringing them closer to financial freedom?
Access was never the finish line. An instant payment means little if the person behind it still feels financially exposed. A digital wallet changes nothing if savings remain fragile, obligations unclear and control out of reach.
The question is shifting. Not how quickly money moves, but what kind of financial life these systems create. This is the lens through which I view the next phase of fintech: whether people walk away with more control, more clarity and a more stable financial footing.
Meaning beyond the transaction
Meaning begins after the transaction settles. Where income stays. How obligations resolve. Whether saving becomes natural or remains a distant intention. Whether people feel they are steering their finances or simply reacting to them.
Fintech has barely touched this layer. Movement was the first breakthrough. Architecture is the next.
A payments platform moves value. A financial system shapes how that value is lived with over time. One is speed. The other is stability, predictability and trust built through repetition.
This difference becomes sharper in MENA, where money is woven through family responsibility, shared commitments and long cycles of support. Financial behaviour here reflects long-standing obligations and social patterns. Systems built without this context can function. They rarely endure.
This is why the next phase of fintech in the region will belong to platforms that behave like financial ecosystems, not standalone products. Systems that absorb complexity quietly and offer clarity at the surface. Systems people return to because they make daily life easier, not because they are prompted to engage.
From speed to system design
From here the industry divides. One path continues to chase speed. Faster rails. Lower cost execution. Broader acceptance. Necessary work, but increasingly interchangeable.
The other path moves into system design. Platforms that take responsibility for the full rhythm of financial life. Where income lands. How spending patterns settle. How obligations clear. How saving becomes default rather than aspiration. Where decisions feel intentional, not reactive.
This is where long-term value sits.
Globally, this shift moves unevenly. In the United States and Western Europe, access is near universal but infrastructure is weighed down by legacy. Money moves fast but reconciliation stays opaque. Credit is abundant but financial stress is widespread. Trust erodes even as technology progresses.
Innovation there must navigate a dense network of fragmented rails, overlapping regulators and entrenched intermediaries. Progress is possible, but often diluted by the weight of what already exists.
The MENA advantage
In much of MENA, the landscape is fundamentally different. The financial foundations are still being built. Real-time payments, open finance, digital identity and SME digitisation sit inside national development agendas. Regulators are enabling innovation while shaping the architecture it runs on.
This changes the trajectory. Where mature markets refine, MENA constructs. Underpenetration and acceleration coexist because the system is still taking form. With less legacy drag and clearer regulatory purpose, innovation moves faster and embeds deeper.
Rather than just adding convenience on top of an old structure, homegrown fintech is helping define the structure itself. Products built inside the region grow in alignment with regulation, labour dynamics, merchant realities and social behaviour. They become infrastructure rather than interface.
This is where the divide between operators and architects becomes visible. Operators move money. Architects design the systems that give it meaning.
In markets still forming their foundations, the question shifts from how fast money moves to how financial life is shaped around that movement. Platforms that take responsibility for the full rhythm of income, spending, rewards and obligation offer something speed alone can’t: stability people trust.
The ones that design for clarity, stability and continuity will sit at the centre of people’s financial lives. And that is where the original promise of fintech becomes real: the freedom created when life around that movement finally makes sense.