Technology
May 14, 2026
du Pay has reached 1.4 million downloads and AED 4 billion in transactions by doing something deceptively simple: treating the unbanked like customers. Now it has a new CEO to take that bet further.
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Walk into almost any conversation about financial inclusion in the Middle East and you will hear the same statistics recycled. Millions of migrant workers without bank accounts. Cash-dependent households locked out of the digital economy. A region where smartphone penetration is among the highest in the world, yet traditional banking remains stubbornly exclusionary for a significant portion of the population.
du Pay, the digital financial services arm of UAE telecom operator du, decided a few years ago that pointing at the problem was less interesting than solving it. On its second anniversary, the numbers suggest it has made a credible start: 1.4 million unique downloads, over USD 1.09 billion (AED 4 billion) in transactions processed, and a product suite deliberately engineered for people that legacy banks have spent decades not serving.
Now the company is signalling that its next chapter will be more ambitious. It has appointed Roberto Mancone as Chief Executive Officer, bringing in a fintech executive whose career arc reads like a tour of nearly every major market where digital banking has tried to displace entrenched financial systems.
The hire is notable not just for what Mancone has done, but for where he has done it. His most recent role was CEO of BEYON Money in Bahrain and the UAE, where he launched and scaled a national digital finance platform backed by a Sovereign Fund. Before that, his work spanned the USA, Europe, the UK, and the GCC across more than 25 years. That breadth of experience matters in a market like the UAE, where regulatory sophistication, a highly mobile population, and genuine political will around financial inclusion create conditions that are unlike almost anywhere else.
Fahad Al Hassawi, Chairman of du Pay, framed the appointment in terms of what comes next rather than what has already been built. "We are excited to welcome Roberto Mancone to the du Pay team as we enter the next chapter of our fintech journey," Al Hassawi said. "His expertise positions him to strengthen our partnerships across the ecosystem while advancing our mission to transform digital payments in the UAE market. Roberto's extensive experience will be invaluable as we continue to innovate and contribute to the rapidly evolving fintech landscape."
That phrasing, "next chapter," is doing real work here. du Pay has operated under the UAE Central Bank's regulatory framework since its launch, offering a suite that covers cash-in and cash-out, peer-to-peer transfers, merchant payments, remittances, IBAN accounts, and debit cards.
The platform provides zero-balance digital wallets with free IBANs, multilingual access, international remittances to more than 200 countries, bill payments, mobile top-ups, and prepaid card services. The architecture of the product is specifically designed to remove the barriers that have historically kept low-income residents out of the formal financial system: no minimum balance, no physical branch visits, no complicated documentation requirements.
In 2025, du Pay added what may be its most consequential feature yet. The launch of "Salary in the Digital Wallet" enables direct digital salary disbursement for workers who do not hold a bank account. In a country with a large migrant workforce that has historically relied on cash wages and informal remittance networks, this is not an incremental update. It is a structural shift in how a significant population segment interacts with money.
Mancone's mandate encompasses overall strategic direction, commercial growth, regulatory compliance, and operational leadership. The company has signalled that its expansion plans include lending, insurance, and investment solutions, to be developed through a combination of in-house capability building and strategic partnerships.
That trajectory, from payments infrastructure to a more complete financial ecosystem, is one that has been attempted in other markets with mixed results. The difference in the UAE context is the regulatory environment, which under the Central Bank has become increasingly sophisticated about licensing and supervising non-bank financial institutions, and the demographic reality of a population that is both highly digital and, in significant segments, genuinely underserved.
The fintech sector globally has learned the hard way that reaching unbanked populations requires more than a mobile app and a clever rebrand. It requires genuine product-market fit with communities whose financial lives are shaped by remittance needs, irregular income, and distrust of institutions that have historically excluded them. du Pay's growth numbers suggest it has found that fit in the UAE. The question Mancone has been hired to answer is whether the company can extend it.
"His extensive experience will be invaluable as we continue to innovate and contribute to the rapidly evolving fintech landscape," Al Hassawi said.
In a region where the rhetoric around financial inclusion has often outpaced the reality, du Pay has built something worth watching: a platform that started with the people most financial institutions overlook, and is now growing into something larger. The next stage of that growth, under new leadership and with a product roadmap that extends well beyond payments, will be a meaningful test of whether digital finance in the Gulf can deliver on its long-stated potential.
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