Independent advisory for financial institutions, acquirers, issuers, fintechs and governments shaping the next generation of payments.
18 specialist advisory areas across payments, fintech, AML and digital assets
Independent technical and regulatory assessment for investors and acquirers
Daily-updated regulatory intelligence across UK, Europe, GCC and Global markets
Analysis and commentary on payments regulation, technology and market developments
MENA Advisory was established in Doha in January 2020. Within weeks of opening, the global pandemic closed borders and disrupted the model that payments businesses across the GCC had relied on, senior expertise flying in from Dubai, London, New York and Singapore as needed. With that model suspended indefinitely, the demand for a payments consultancy with permanent, senior capability on the ground in Qatar became immediate and concrete. What began as a small founding team has grown steadily over six years to a practice of more than twenty professionals and subject matter specialists.
We are an independent international consultancy focused entirely on the payments and fintech sector. We operate from Doha, London and Istanbul, advising financial institutions, major retailers, travel management companies, acquirers, fintechs and government entities across the GCC, MENA and Europe. Our principals have held senior roles at card schemes, acquiring banks, issuing institutions and fintech businesses across three continents. We bring practitioner knowledge, not theoretical frameworks, to every engagement, covering the full payments value chain from strategy and product design through to licensing, regulatory compliance and technology selection.
We work with clients at critical points of decision: entering a new market, responding to a regulatory change, evaluating a technology investment, or building a new payments capability from the ground up. Our independence is deliberate, we carry no vendor relationships and no technology partnerships that would compromise the objectivity of our advice. Every recommendation we make is grounded in what is right for the client's specific business model, regulatory environment and commercial objectives.
Work With UsAdvisory services are delivered by practitioners who have held senior roles in payments, regulation, and financial services, not by analysts working from secondary research.
Founder & Managing Director
Abdullah holds a degree in Computer Science from a leading US university and built his early career in payments technology across North America before moving into senior commercial and strategic roles in Belgium and Turkey with global fintech and payment network operators. Over two decades he has led business development, product strategy, and regulatory engagement functions at organisations spanning card scheme operations, payment gateway infrastructure, and digital financial services. He returned to Qatar to establish MENA Advisory, bringing direct experience of how payments markets are structured, regulated, and competed in across three continents. He leads the firm's engagements across the GCC and advises clients on market entry, payment licensing, digital infrastructure strategy, and regulatory compliance.
Practitioners & Subject Matter Specialists
Client engagements are supported by a team of senior practitioners, each with deep domain experience in specific areas of payments, regulation, and financial technology. The team includes a former head of compliance at a Tier 1 European acquirer with twenty years of AML and financial crime programme experience across the EU and GCC; a payments technology architect who has led core banking and payment switching implementations across the Middle East and Africa; a regulatory specialist with direct experience of licensing processes at the FCA, CBUAE, and SAMA; and a card scheme veteran with operational roles spanning Visa and Mastercard across CEMEA. Engagements are staffed to the specific subject matter, no generalists, no analysts briefed for the occasion.
Structured engagements delivered by specialists, not generalists. Each mandate begins with a clear scope and ends with actionable outputs your team can implement.
We start with a structured intake session to understand your business model, regulatory environment, and the specific problem you are trying to solve. No generic frameworks applied to situations they were not designed for. The output is a defined scope, timeline, and set of deliverables agreed before any work begins.
We examine the relevant regulatory requirements, market data, and operational context in detail. For compliance mandates, this means a gap assessment against the applicable framework. For commercial engagements, it means market sizing, competitive positioning, and commercial model analysis. We work from primary sources, regulatory text, scheme rules, and first-hand market intelligence.
Outputs are calibrated to the audience and purpose: board papers, regulatory submissions, technical specifications, vendor evaluation matrices, compliance programme documentation, or strategic roadmaps. Every deliverable is written to be used, not filed. We do not produce 80-page reports when a 12-page board paper is what is needed.
Where needed, we remain engaged through implementation, reviewing vendor responses, supporting regulatory dialogue, advising on programme execution, or embedding with the client team on a fractional basis. Engagements run on project, retainer, or embedded-advisor models depending on the mandate and client preference.
We work with:
We work with a range of organisations at significant points of commercial and strategic change, from financial institutions entering new payments markets to corporates reviewing their payment costs and risk exposure.
We had been circling the GCC markets for two years without a clear path to licensing. MENA Advisory mapped the requirements, identified the structural issues with our existing compliance programme, and guided us through the authorisation process. We received our payment institution licence within the timeframe they projected. The practitioner knowledge, not theoretical frameworks, made the difference.
Our transaction monitoring system was generating over 4,000 alerts a month with a true positive rate below 3%. MENA Advisory rebuilt our typology library from scratch around our actual business model, introduced ML-based layering alongside our rules engine, and reduced alert volume by 60% while improving detection quality. The SAR filing programme they designed passed regulatory examination without remediation.
We were evaluating an acquisition of a regional payment processor and needed a team that could assess the target's technology architecture, regulatory standing, and fraud controls simultaneously. MENA Advisory delivered a risk-rated report that identified three material issues our internal team had missed. One of those findings directly impacted the price renegotiation. The investment paid for itself in the first week.
We were in Mastercard's ECM programme with a chargeback ratio touching 1.3% and facing escalating monthly fines. MENA Advisory identified that 40% of our disputes were driven by a single descriptor issue and a gap in our 3DS implementation. Within 90 days of their remediation programme, we had exited the monitoring programme entirely. Their knowledge of scheme rules at an operational level is exceptional.
Our ISO 20022 migration had stalled after an initial vendor selection that proved unfit for our cross-border volumes. MENA Advisory came in, reset the programme scope, rebuilt the vendor evaluation framework, and managed the technical dialogue with our new implementation partner. What had been an 18-month delay was recovered within two quarters. They translated technical complexity into decisions our board could act on.
We needed to understand whether becoming a PayFac made commercial sense for our platform, and if so, what it would cost to build the underwriting and monitoring capability required. MENA Advisory modelled the revenue impact at different volume levels, outlined the Visa and Mastercard registration requirements, and helped us structure the sponsor bank conversation. We made a fully informed decision rather than a speculative one.
Our corporate KYB process was taking an average of 19 days and losing merchants to competitors. MENA Advisory redesigned our onboarding workflow around automated straight-through processing for standard risk profiles, with targeted friction reserved for complex ownership structures and high-risk indicators. Average onboarding time dropped to four days, and our fraud-at-boarding rate actually improved. Rigour and speed turned out not to be in conflict.
We engaged MENA Advisory to assess where A2A payments would displace card volume in our acquiring portfolio and over what timeline. Their analysis was grounded in actual merchant economics, not generalist forecasts. The strategic roadmap they delivered gave our board a credible basis for capital allocation decisions across the next three years. Independent advice with no vendor agenda is rarer than it should be in this industry.
End-to-end advisory on card programme design, processor selection, scheme membership, interchange optimisation and portfolio management for both consumer and commercial card programmes.
Architecture and deployment advisory for digital payment platforms, mobile wallets, super-app payment integration and next-generation checkout experiences across web and in-app environments.
Omnichannel payment orchestration covering gateway selection, payment method mix, 3DS2 implementation, checkout conversion optimisation and cross-border payment acceptance.
Commercial payment advisory covering virtual card programmes, eInvoicing under the EU mandate, supply chain finance integration, AP/AR automation and business payment platform strategy.
Cross-border payment strategy for remittance operators and digital money transfer services, covering corridor economics, banking access, FX management, compliance and licence requirements.
Virtual card solutions for travel management companies, airline and hotel payment programmes, lodging card integration, TMC rebate structures and travel wallet product design.
Practical advisory on AI deployment in payments, fraud, underwriting, customer service, and distributed ledger applications including tokenised assets, smart contracts and cross-border settlement.
PCI-DSS programme management, AML/CFT framework design, KYC/PEP process optimisation, fraud strategy, chargeback management and regulatory compliance across multiple jurisdictions.