Elham Tamimi is a Senior Compliance, Financial Crime and Governance Executive, founder of Ethical Advisory, and a founding board member of MESA. Elham, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much, Rachel. Thanks for having me.
The UAE issued one of the world's first dedicated payment stablecoin regimes before most G20 countries had even drafted one. Was it that the region leapfrogged the rest of the world, or was the rest of the world just hesitating?
A bit of both. When the world was trying to recover from Covid, the UAE was very visionary as it always is. They established VARA, and even before that ADGM already had the first framework and regulatory guidance for digital assets. Then the Central Bank of UAE followed with the Payment Token Services Regulation. It was not a coincidence. It was visionary thinking, acting fast — while others were still figuring out how to do it, the UAE just saw the light and went for it.
Everyone talks about stablecoins as a payment revolution. You have spent years inside banks. What do stablecoins actually threaten, and what do they quietly depend on?
Many people in the industry see stablecoins as a threat, especially to banks — whereas it has nothing to do with that. Stablecoins are certainly not a threat to the financial ecosystem, but they are a disruption. And the irony is that stablecoins depend on the very system they disrupt. They rely heavily on banks for reserve requirements, traditional audits, and the rails. It is renovating the banking industry — not a threat.
You have led research spanning Hong Kong to Brazil to Turkey. What has surprised you most about how differently each market thinks about stablecoins?
That is a testament to the work we do at MESA. We have corridors approaching 15 at the moment — Hong Kong, Vietnam, the UK — and we add new ones every day. MESA's corridor work is where we educate, research, and help the key players who are transacting in that corridor. We bring the right parties together, show them the bigger picture, help them understand regulation and policy guidance, and find the most suitable way within regulation to conduct a stablecoin transaction. And our biggest aspiration is to see an AED stablecoin in all of those corridors — from the UAE to the world.
The US has the GENIUS Act, Europe has MiCA, and the UAE has its own regime. Which would the rest of the world copy?
Stablecoins are borderless. When the product itself is borderless by nature, no single jurisdiction can contain it. America gave stablecoins scale and legitimacy. European MiCA regulation gave them comprehensiveness. The UAE gave them speed and clarity. A bit from each jurisdiction — as the world grasps stablecoins and digital assets more and more each day.
Thank you so much, Elham.
Thank you so much, Rachel.
