FinTech Innovations In The Middle East With Kevin Kilty

When Augusta Mirchandani sat down with Kevin Kilty, Founder and CEO of Hubpay, the conversation moved quickly beyond payments. It became a discussion about:

- - Infrastructure.
  - Monetary power.
  - And how artificial intelligence and stablecoins are quietly reshaping global trade.

Hubpay began as a cross-border payments platform in the UAE. Today, it is positioning itself for something larger:

What Kevin calls a new financial ecosystem.

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Is The UAE Becoming The World’s Financial Bridge?

Filling The Gap

When Kevin arrived in the UAE in 2016, one thing struck him immediately.

In the UK, companies like TransferWise and digital challengers had already simplified cross-border payments. In the UAE, no fintech had yet stepped into that space.

The region moves billions in remittances every year. Yet onboarding was slow. FX spreads were wide. Infrastructure was fragmented.

Hubpay launched in 2019 to solve that gap.

The early years were difficult. Licensing frameworks were new. APIs were immature. The ecosystem was still forming. Revenue was modest. The market was not yet ready.

But Kevin stayed.

Because he believed the UAE would not remain underbuilt forever.

The Gateway Strategy

Hubpay’s ambition is no longer simply to process payments.

It is to leverage the UAE’s position as a bridge between developed and emerging markets.

The UAE is one of the world’s largest remittance corridors. It is also a growing hub for global trade. As regulatory frameworks matured in ADGM, DIFC and the Central Bank, the environment shifted.

In the last 18 months, momentum has accelerated.

Hubpay is now approaching $10 million in ARR, moving toward profitability, and preparing for a Series B round to scale internationally.

The ambition is clear: move from startup to scale-up.
Long term, potentially to IPO.

The Stablecoin Inflexion Point

The most consequential part of the discussion was not about payments.

It was about stablecoins.

Kevin argues that stablecoins are not a niche crypto experiment. They are becoming a core financial rail.

In volatile markets, dollar-pegged tokens like USDT and USDC remove currency risk while maintaining speed and low cost. But even in developed markets, stablecoins are proving more efficient.

He describes what he calls the “stablecoin sandwich”:

EUR → USDT → JPY

In certain trade corridors, this route is faster and cheaper than direct fiat-to-fiat conversion through traditional banks.

The implications are significant:

Reduced FX spreads
Faster working capital cycles
Lower friction in global trade

Perhaps most strikingly, Kevin believes stablecoins may reinforce the dominance of the US dollar rather than weaken it.

At a time when many speculate about de-dollarisation, dollar-backed digital tokens may extend the dollar's reach for decades.

That is not a product feature.
That is monetary infrastructure evolving.

AI: The Compression Of Time

If stablecoins reshape money, AI reshapes execution.

Hubpay reduced business onboarding from weeks to 24 hours. Soon, it may be minutes.

More dramatically, engineering cycles have collapsed.

What once took a year to build can now be developed in weeks. A codebase that took two years to assemble saw 20,000 lines added in four days through AI-assisted development.

This is not about marginal efficiency.

It changes competitive dynamics.

Time to market, historically a moat, is shrinking.

Operational cost curves are flattening.

Human oversight replaces manual execution.

Kevin believes the next generation of fintech will be built on two pillars:

Stablecoins
AI-native architecture

He calls it FinTech 3.0.

Leadership Under Pressure

The glamour of fintech rarely reflects the grind.

There were years when infrastructure lagged. Years when the market was early. Years when revenue growth did not match ambition.

Kevin credits robust venture backing and disciplined capital management for survival. He is clear that not all capital is equal. Institutional VCs with follow-on capacity matter in downturns.

Personally, Kevin's resilience comes from structure:

Training,
Outdoor challenges,
And time away from the screen.

The Long Game

Hubpay’s mission is not simply profitability.

It is to build durable financial rails across emerging and developed markets alike.

Kevin does not intend to build and flip. He speaks of long-term scale. Of international expansion. Of potentially listing in the UAE, London, or both.

He would not trade his worst day as a founder for his best day in banking.

That mindset explains much of the trajectory.

So, Is The UAE The Next Global Gateway?

The answer may already be unfolding.

With regulatory maturity, increasing crypto adoption, growing capital markets, and AI-native fintechs emerging, the UAE is positioning itself as a financial bridge between East and West.

Hubpay is one example of that shift.

Not just as a payment processor.
But as a company that’s betting that the next phase of finance will be faster, more programmable, and increasingly borderless.

The future may not be about replacing traditional finance.

It may be about rebuilding it layer by layer on smarter rails.

And that work has already begun.

Listen to the full episode to hear more about Kevin's insights on navigating high-pressure careers and the power of mindfulness.

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