Picture used for illustrative purpose only.

Sajjad Ahmad, Deputy Business Editor

The UAE financial technology (FinTech) sector is one of the fastest growing in the region on account of the UAE leadership and their drive to encourage and develop the sector, this was revealed during the Abu Dhabi Finance Week.

“UAE has developed a robust regulatory frameworks to attract new fundings and has also established a range of accelerator programmes to improve access to specialist global and local talent pools,” said Mohamed Al Hashemi, Co-founder of MidChains Limited, a digital asset trading platform based in Abu Dhabi.

Hashemi said,” As an Abu Dhabi homegrown company participation in ADFW was natural and essential for us to showcase our support. It was an honour and privilege being part of the inaugural ADFW, it was exciting to see such a great attendance from all over the world to our home in Abu Dhabi, and we got great exposure. We also got the opportunity to use the platform to announce our exciting partnership with Al Maryah Community Bank, which will enable the bank’s customers to have a secure and regulated channel to trade and store Virtual Assets.

He said, “We are a young exchange and custodian platform developing and growing; we are open to retail, professional, and institutional clients globally with our services but currently focused on major institutional investors and corporate partnerships, such as the one we recently announced with Visa, Network International, Al Maryah Community Bank, and many others soon in the pipeline. We are looking to launch our retail-focused trading application in Q1 2023 which will accelerate the growth of our retail user base rapidly during 2023.”
 
He added, “Transparency and regulations are some of our core values and our product provides the security and services that both institutional and retail investors are looking for in entering the crypto space, in light of our fully regulated structure, robust controls, and governance across our trading and custodian platform where all our client’s assets are held in escrow accounts under the oversight of our regulators.”

Praising the recent launch of Middle East, Africa, and Asia Crypto and Blockchain Association, he concluded, “In an industry going through the throes of a confidence crisis, the creation of a regional industry body is a timely development to help ecosystem players unite and lobby for the things the sector sorely needs to rebuild its reputation, namely more transparency and better regulation.”