Research Paper: FinTech Regulation in the Middle East and North Africa

The Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) at the University of Cambridge Judge Business School with MENA regional partner ADGM Academy Research Centre, collaborated to produce the FinTech Regulation in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) study, which reviews how FinTech and wider Digital Financial Services (DFS) challenges have been met by the regulatory efforts and regulatory innovation initiatives across MENA region jurisdictions.

The findings of the study note that 92% of sampled jurisdictions have established regulatory frameworks for payments, with 8% of these specific to digital payments – underlining the dominance of the payments subsector relative to other FinTech verticals, in terms of the level of business and start-up activity. Similarly, 92% of sampled jurisdictions in MENA have regulatory frameworks in place for eMoney – with 42% creating a specific framework for the purpose and 50% regulating via a general payments framework. There are 67% of sampled jurisdictions in MENA that have a bespoke framework that regulates P2P lending with a further 17 planning to introduce a framework. In addition, 69% of the sampled MENA jurisdictions have a bespoke equity crowdfunding framework with 8% planning to introduce one.