Couchonomics with Arjun

Jayesh Patel is the CEO of Wio Bank. Recently launched less than a year ago, Wio bank is remarkable because it targets a segment of the population that may be the most under-served in the world: micro businesses, which account for over 99% of all business activity in the world. Jayesh is highly passionate as he discusses the evolution of banking in practical terms. He talks us through how the rela...

In this episode, we take a step back from the world of finance to get a bigger picture of the way technology is influencing all of our lives. Our guide to this evolution is Dr Noah Raford, the renowned futurist and the mind behind the incredible Museum of the Future. The first task Dr Raford is burdened with is explaining what exactly a futurist does. He describes a profession built around making...

In the second part of our unprecedented 2-Part episode, we're diving into the technical aspects that make crypto possible to understand some of its most practical use cases. One of the most glamorous uses for crypto is obviously the possibility to make and receive payments. Dominic Longman and Nadeem Ladki explore how the relationship between crypto and fiat currencies is pushing crypto towar...

Cryptocurrency has emerged as one of the most exciting investment opportunities in history. While the field is still in its nascency, multiple users have thrown their support behind this invention and have begun to find use cases that take crypto out of the abstract and into the real world. No company exemplifies this as much as Binance. With over 150 million users around the world, Binance is the...

In this episode, we depart from our usual fintech discourse and talk about something a little more high-speed than payments. Amna Al Qubaisi is a professional race car driver who has the prestigious honour of being the first Emirati woman to race in Formula 3, as well as being one of the first women to drive in Formula E. Joining me on this episode, Amna shares her unique experiences with being be...

Leila Hurstel might have the coolest job title ever as the Chief Metaverse Officer at Verse Estate, but today she wears the title of guest on Couchonomics. Settling comfortably into the famous couch, Leila shares a brief overview of her time spent studying fintech at Harvard before pioneering the AllStarsWomen DAO. Leila shares how the decentralized autonomous organization arose out of a deep desi...

Couchonomics is back! For our inaugural episode of Season 02 we're examining the Buy Now, Pay Later model with Mr. Buy Now, Pay Later himself, Hosam Arab: Co-Founder and CEO of Tabby. Buy Now, Pay Later has been an exciting sector to watch. Just a few years ago many viewed it as the golden child of the embedded finance space and now just as many people view it as an objective failure. Hosam b...

Couchonomics kicks off its Amsterdam Special with the Chief Commercial Officer at Adyen, Roelant Prins.  Having led a career in fintech for over 20 years, Roelant has personally experienced the rapid development of the sector. He worked with the Royal bank of Scotland in early 2000 before moving on to head numerous leadership and management roles in payments technology. Roelant has been a speaker...

When Dr Bernd van Linder attained his PhD in artificial intelligence over 20 years ago, the field was viewed as intensely academic with few practical applications. Not desiring to pursue an academic career, Dr Van Linder entered the world of finance in the early 2000s. Over his 20 plus year career he has slowly worked his way to CEO of Commercial Bank of Dubai. In his new position, Dr Van Linder i...

Madhusudanan and Prabhu Rangarajan are the Co-founders of M2P, an innovative, India-born fintech company with ambitious expansion goals for Dubai. However, word on the streets suggests that the party is over for startups, fintech companies included. Madhu and Prabhu start the conversation by highlighting what sets them apart from other fintech companies and offer valuable insights into which finte...

Mihai Draghici joins us on the couch from a busy day on the road. Travelling all the way from Bucharest, he brings with us the exciting story of how the idea for his innovative FinTech company, PayByFace, came about. Coming from an engineering background, Mihai had the bright idea that facial recognition could prove to be a convenient, safe payment system. After all, you never forget your face at...

The Global P2P Payment Market Size accounted for USD 1,872 Billion in 2021 and is estimated to achieve a market size of USD 9,135 Billion by 2030.  The P2P payments market is a very fragmented market. Important players either acquire new rivals or combine with them. The others invest significant money in research and development initiatives. These initiatives lead to market growth for P2P payments...

Investing has often been viewed as an expensive, costly process that only a privileged few can access. But as technology evolves and grows, companies like Baraka are finding increasingly creative ways to give people access to financial markets. Founder and CEO of Baraka, Feras Jalbout, joins us for a lively discussion that sparks off with a bit of a hot-take. Since Baraka charges no commission, it...

Abdullah Al-Othman joins us on the couch today to share his views on an ever-evolving fintech landscape. As the founder of Geidea, one of Saudi Arabia’s leading fintech companies, Abdullah’s first order of business is to solve a small mystery for us: what does the name Geidea mean? Once that’s cleared up, Abdullah shares his view on what makes fintech in Saudi Arabia unique from other places in th...

In terms of fintech adoption, Egypt has been a little slow on the take compared to other nations. However, companies like ValU are changing that. As innovative companies and dynamic leaders forge a path to the future, Egypt emerges as one of the most exciting regions on the fintech map. Our guest and guide today is Walid Hassouna, founder and CEO of ValU . He breaks down some of the key factors dr...

NFTs are a hot topic very few people really understand. For many of us, our first time hearing of NFTs was in 2021 when they suddenly seemed to be a digital gold mine. However, for the patient community that diligently crafts the famed images, NFTs represent an opportunity for profound and fundamental transformation. Kristel Bechara joins us on Couchonmics to share her view as the rising star of t...

Around the world, open banking adoption is rising steadily, embraced by a growing number of banks and fintech companies providing innovative financial products and tapping into new market segments. As of the end of Q2 2022, global research identified 1,578 banking platforms that are making APIs available, representing an annual growth of 8%. To identify all the advantages and the challenges this g...

Fintech is an ecosystem in a state of ordered chaos. The rules change just as frequently as the consumers do, and businesses must adapt to both or be squeezed out of profits. In this competitive, fast-paced environment, each player focuses on securing their own interest. While this leads to phenomenal individual success stories, some leading figures believe it is important to keep an eye on the bi...

Many of us never consider money as a serious concept until later on in our lives. By then, the damage has been done: unnecessary purchases and loans have wormed their way into the wallet. Smeetha Ghosh-Jorgensen, CEO and co-founder of Cashee, knows these dangers all too well. In this episode, she takes us through how Cashee will encourage teenagers to be mindful of the ways they use money.  In tod...

In 2021, emerging venture markets in the Middle East, Africa, Pakistan and Turkey saw record-breaking activity levels in the investment space. As 2022 forges ahead, we can expect to see another year of unprecedented investment activity in these regions despite turbulence in the global markets. Gaurav Dhar is a CEO at Marshal & MENA FinTech Association Board Member and in this, the brand new ep...

The 2020s have not been an easy time for investors. Although investing seemed to be showing signs of recovery, recent trends have seen investment into some sectors take a nose-dive. Businesses struggle to keep pace with rising interest rates, record levels of inflation, and many other seemingly overwhelming economic macro-forces. A stinging question lurks silently in the background; Will investmen...

MENA has made considerable economic progress over the last decade. Still, a couple of formidable challenges remain, including transforming local economies and inclusive job creation. Insurance has the potential to address these challenges and help countries in the region achieve their growth targets. Despite these potential benefits, the insurance sector is underdeveloped in the MENA region and it...

The FinTech industry is rapidly expanding and evolving. New innovations and inventions spring up every day at every point in the financial world. In all this excitement, some segments become overlooked. Insurance, bogged down by hundreds of years of tradition and legacy, is one of those neglected and forgotten segments. But Tanja Magas, Chief Data and Analytics Officer at Democrance, believes othe...

Over the past couple of years, digital transformation has continued to accelerate across all sectors, and commerce has been no exception. Even as society is getting back to normal, with restrictions lifting and offices reopening, habits adopted during the pandemic are sustained. Online and offline, spending has been transformed. While uncertainty and unpredictability are now expected, one thing th...

 It’s an open secret that credit, when leveraged intelligently, has the power to unlock incredible potential in your business. This is the major reason why credit is so easily accessible in many parts of the world. But, Pakistan, a nation with over 50 million active bank accounts, has been relatively slow to conform to the trend, with only 500 thousand credit cards nationwide. Omair Ansari, the fo...