With me is the Group CEO of Arab Financial Services, Dr. Samer Soliman. Samer, thank you for joining us today.
Thank you for having me.
You serve more than 60 banks across 20 markets. Where is the regional payments market heading?
Payments is evolving fast in the Middle East and Africa. We started by saying cash moves to digital — that is now the norm. People expect to use their phone to pay and to accept payments. The evolution continues to be faster and adoption of technology is the fastest in our region given the average age across the Middle East and Africa.
How will AFS help banks get ready for AI agents?
We play a critical role — we sit between acceptance and payments. We will expand across the value chain and introduce AI agents to enable banks to do payments and introduce AI-driven identity commerce to help merchants do more transactions. Since we sit at the intersection of both, we will enhance our platform to serve our banks and merchant base to use agentic AI going forward.
What needs to be built into the payment rails for AI agents?
AI agent commerce is introducing a new party to the payments ecosystem. Everyone knew there is an issuer, an acquirer, a payment scheme, and a customer or merchant. Now we are introducing an agent between all of this — which means rewriting the rules of acceptance. First, what limits will a bank give these agents and what can customers delegate to agents? Second, each AI agent must be identified by a token — never share your card details with an AI agent. Third — what happens with chargebacks? We are working closely with all stakeholders to shape these new rules.
How are you building fraud prevention for an agentic world?
Payments is a trust business. Agents will do transactions. We have to develop our systems to combat attacks from agents. Does this mean one agent combats fraud from another agent? I think this is the future. But we are writing those rules together with the payment ecosystem.
Is the Gulf positioned to leapfrog the West in writing these rules?
100%. Average age and adoption of technology — nothing beats the Middle East. We have done it in the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt. We are working on Oman. Adoption of new innovation is significant and many markets across the Middle East are catching up.
Doctor Samer, it was lovely to have you. Thank you.
Thank you for having me.
