This feature appears in the July edition of Business Today Middle East
Newly appointed as CEO of du Pay, Roberto Mancone is pushing the platform well beyond payments and into lending, insurance and investment, with financial inclusion at the centre of his mandate.
Telecom companies launching financial products is not new, but most have struggled to be taken seriously as fintech players. What makes du Pay different — or is that scepticism still something you have to overcome?
du Pay was never conceived as an add‑on to a telecom business. It was architected as a regulated digital financial services platform, licensed by the Central Bank of the UAE, with the same compliance, risk, and operational standards as any financial institution in the country. That matters, because in fintech, credibility is earned through governance, not branding.
Consumer trust can quickly disappear when a financial product lets them down. We have to earn it. For du Pay, the recognition from Visa’s Partnership Excellence Award and the E-Payment Solution of the Year accolade at the 2025 Entrepreneur Leaders in E-Business Award was a good external signal. In two years, du Pay surpassed 1.4 million unique downloads and processed over AED 4 billion in transactions. Those are real people using the platform for remittances, everyday payments, and digital salary deposits. When people trust you with their money and keep coming back, that is the real answer.
“This is not a saturated market; it is an under-penetrated financial inclusion market with deep commercial potential across payments, remittances, credit, and insurance.”
Every bank, fintech and super-app in the UAE wants a share of the digital wallet. In a market this saturated, what is the actual unmet need that du Pay exists to solve?
The UAE is one of the largest sources of remittances in the world. For business leaders and investors, the financially underserved population here represents substantial transaction volume, significant remittance flows, and in time, real demand for credit and insurance. This is a huge market with commercial depth. This is not a saturated market; it is an under-penetrated financial inclusion market with deep commercial potential across payments, remittances, credit, and insurance. That is where du Pay is focused, and it is a commercially serious position to be in.
There are residents in the UAE who run into real obstacles with documentation requirements, minimum balance thresholds while approaching traditional banking services. Expatriates make up approximately 88 percent of the UAE’s population, and a large proportion of them are low to middle income workers sending money home every month. For those people, that friction has a genuine human cost.
du Pay was built to remove those barriers. We offer zero-balance digital wallets with free IBANs and international remittances to over 200 countries. In 2025, we launched “Salary in the Digital Wallet,” enabling direct digital salary disbursement for workers without a traditional bank account. That product alone illustrates the gap we are closing: access to income is the first step to financial inclusion.
“We use the du relationship as a starting point and a trust signal, and yes it also gives us the reach, but we run the business with a focus on product and customer experience.”
du’s core business is connectivity. How much of du Pay’s advantage comes from that existing customer relationship, and how much do you have to build from scratch as if you were any other fintech startup?
du serves millions of customers across the country and that familiarity and customer trust in the brand is a real advantage. But everything that real financial services require had to be built from scratch. du Pay was engineered to financial services standards from the ground up, and that distinction shows in the product. The regulatory infrastructure, the compliance framework, the fraud and risk systems, the customer support that can handle a genuine financial problem under pressure.
We have to remember that in financial services, trust is earned one transaction at a time. Every time a remittance arrives or a complaint gets resolved is how you earn the right to stay in someone’s financial life. So the honest answer is this: we use the du relationship as a starting point and a trust signal, and yes it also gives us the reach, but we run the business with a focus on product and customer experience.
Cash is still deeply embedded in parts of the UAE economy, particularly among certain expatriate and labour populations. Is that du Pay’s real opportunity, and what would it take to actually shift that behaviour?
Yes, and it is one of the most significant opportunities in the UAE right now. A large share of the workforce here still relies heavily on cash for daily transactions. The Central Bank of the UAE’s Financial Infrastructure Transformation programme reflects a clear national commitment to changing that, and du Pay is positioned to contribute directly to it.
That means building something easy to use for everyone, whether it is someone who arrived in this country recently or who may be managing their finances, or does not have time for a complicated process.
“Salary in the Digital Wallet” is a clear example of how the shift happens in practice. When your salary lands digitally and you can handle your remittances, bill payments, and top-ups from the same place, the habit starts to form. The key is making the first experience simple enough that people give it a real chance. Once they do, the product does the rest.
AI is being used across fintech for fraud detection, credit scoring and personalisation, but it is also raising new risks around data and trust. Where is du Pay leaning in on AI, and where are you being deliberately cautious?
Data trust is not negotiable. Our customers share sensitive financial information with us and that is a serious responsibility. I have seen what happens when new technology gets deployed without enough thought about the consequences. So we are deliberate here.
The big opportunity for AI is in credit and risk scoring, which we will activate as we launch our lending products. AI can help us build more accurate and more inclusive models, especially for customers who are invisible to traditional scoring. It also has significant advantages in fraud detection and real‑time monitoring that strengthen customer safety.
At du, every model goes through rigorous testing, human oversight, and full compliance with Central Bank regulations. Those safeguards exist because this is someone’s financial life, and we take that seriously. For us, AI is not about speed; it is about trust. And trust is the real currency in financial services.
If you look at the digital wallets that have failed to gain traction in this region, what do you think they got wrong, and how is du Pay avoiding the same mistakes?
Too many platforms have been launched with an impressive feature list designed to generate attention rather than solve a genuine everyday problem for a specific user. Developers also underestimate how trust is built in financial services. People do not recommend their wallet the same way they share a video on a social media platform. They make their decision based on their own experience, and that takes time. Patience and consistency matter here more than a campaign.
Also, it is important not to mistake downloads for engagement. Acquisition is not retention. If users don’t come back after the first session, the product hasn’t earned its place. At du Pay, we started with a clear customer in mind, the resident who needs a reliable and affordable financial tool and built from there. Surpassing 1.4 million unique downloads while processing over AED 4 billion in transactions tells me the product is working. Both numbers moving together is the real measure.
Five years from now, what does it look like if du Pay has genuinely succeeded — not just in terms of user numbers, but in terms of changing how people in the UAE actually use money day to day?
The version of success we’re working towards is straightforward: every person living and working in the UAE has access to financial tools that are reliable and built for their needs. Someone who has arrived in the UAE recently and doesn’t qualify for a traditional bank account should still receive their salary digitally, pay their bills, send money home to family, and eventually access credit and insurance.
On the product side, we are building du Pay to expand well beyond payments into lending, insurance, and investment, building the kind of comprehensive digital financial ecosystem where a traditional bank account is no longer a prerequisite for full financial participation.
This is in line with the financial inclusion objectives of the country and its cities. du Pay strives to be a direct contributor to that agenda. The addressable market is significant: millions of residents, substantial transaction volumes, and a clear path into credit and insurance. The measure of success will be whether we have changed the financial reality for people living and working here. That is what I want du Pay to be known for.
