The Hidden Fintech Theme at Money20/20 Middle East: Arming Incumbents

I took the bus out to Malham — an hour north of downtown Riyadh, a stretch of the Najd desert that’s somehow become the region’s favorite place for giant tech events. LEAP lives here; this time Money20/20 set up shop, too.

As I stepped into the massive venue, the layout felt familiar: Hall 1 for government entities, Hall 2 for the big corporates — banks, insurers, telcos — and Hall 3 is where the magic happens: the scrappy fintech startups.

I slowed down on my way to the Capital Stage and the Investor Lounge and just walked the aisles, talking to founders. You see all the usual suspects — embedded payments and finance, embedded insurance; saving apps, wealth apps, robo-advisors; open banking; stock trading; neobanks. But underneath the noise, one theme kept surfacing this year:

If wave one of fintech startups was about direct disruption, I mean Fintechs fighting incumbents head on, with disruptive tech and innovative UX. It seems that wave two, or the new theme I’m noticing, is about enabling the disrupted ones to adapt. In other words, arming incumbents with disrupter-grade rails to fight back!

For a decade, disruptors tried to replace banks and brokers. The new theme is different: founders are whitelabeling those disruptive playbooks as ready-to-ship products — tech, AI, compliance, risk, and UX included — so incumbents can fight back and without rebuilding their own stack.

Startup-in-a-Box for Incumbents

• Brokerage-in-a-Box (Robinhood → rails for banks):
  DriveWealth, Alpaca — spin up mobile, fractional trading with KYC/AML, custody, order routing, funding flows already wired.

• Neobank-in-a-Box (Revolut → rails for banks):
  Solaris (EU), Unit (US), NymCard (MENA) — accounts, cards, payments, lending via APIs, often sitting on modern cores like Mambu and Thought Machine. Incumbents “rent” a neobank stack and ship in weeks.

• SME Underwriting-in-a-Box (AI lenders → rails for banks):
  Amount (US — incl. Linear/ODX lineage) Orbii and Abwab (MENA) — digital origination and decisioning so banks can price and approve like a challenger. OakNorth Credit Intelligence — SME credit monitoring and stress-testing as a service.

• BNPL-in-a-Box (Klarna/Affirm → rails for banks):
  Amount’s white-label installments stack — and network rails from Mastercard/Visa — let issuers turn on checkout financing without rebuilding risk, merchant UX, or settlement.

• Wealth-in-a-Box (robo & digital wealth → rails for banks):
  Apex (clearing/custody + developer tooling), FNZ (post-trade infrastructure), InvestCloud/Bambu/WealthOS (digital advice & front-end) — a turnkey wealth stack from onboarding to portfolio management.

• Issuing & Payouts-in-a-Box (modern cards → rails for banks):
  Marqeta, Galileo — virtual/physical issuing, spend controls, tokenization, JIT funding, embedded payouts for instant product launches.

• Open-Finance-in-a-Box (data & A2A payments → rails for banks):
  Tink (Visa), Finicity (Mastercard) globally; Spare, Tarabut, & Lean in MENA — regulated account data, payment initiation, and risk signals powering both incumbents and fintechs.

Why incumbents are buying

Incumbents are choosing rails because they collapse time-to-market: instead of multi-year core transformations, banks can plug in APIs and launch in weeks. Just as important, the compliance, reporting, and sponsor-bank relationships come pre-baked, giving executives regulatory cover to move faster without slipping on governance.

The economics are cleaner, too — shifting from heavy CapEx rebuilds to usage-based OpEx that scales with adoption. And these rails preserve option value: institutions can run balance-sheet products themselves or partner with third parties, all on the same stack. So if you’re building infra rails, ask yourself: What “startup-in-a-box” can I hand to a bank so they ship like a fintech — safely, fast, and with pride?

Why This Matters (VC Lens)

For investors, rails target bigger, stickier markets. They sell into every financial institution, and once integrated — thanks to compliance, risk, and data plumbing — the contracts tend to be long and churn low. At scale, platform margins improve and pricing rides customer volumes, creating attractive operating leverage. Exit optionality is strong as well: banks, processors, networks, and core providers are natural acquirers, while the best platforms can compound as independent infrastructure.

The risks are real, though: crowded categories can commoditize into price competition; enterprise sales cycles are slow and political; and regulatory shifts can redraw the “compliant enough” line overnight.

Why This Matters (Founder Lens)

For founders, rails let you skip the CAC arms race and sell measurable ROI to institutions instead of fighting costly consumer acquisition battles. You can power both sides of the market — incumbents and new fintechs — diversifying demand while compounding credibility with every successful integration.

The trade-offs are the price of admission: dependence on a handful of flagship customers, heavy enterprise motions that require patience and process, and less public glory — you’re the plumbing, not the poster child. You risk not becoming the Robinhood, the Revolut, or even the Tabby and Tamara of the future! But if you execute, the leverage and durability can more than make up for the spotlight.

The Bigger Picture

Wave one was direct disruption. Wave two is enabling the disrupted ones to adapt, or arming incumbents with disruptor-grade rails.

If finance is becoming a modular software stack, the winners might not just be the apps we see, but the rails we don’t.

BUT Two questions for founders and fellow VCs:

👉 In the 2025 and beyond, is selling rails the smarter fintech play than chasing users or enterprise clients?

👉 Or does focusing on infra risk missing the next breakout consumer or enterprise unicorn?

I’m optimistic either way. The pie is getting bigger, the stack is getting cleaner, and the distance between an idea and a live financial product keeps shrinking.

I also wonder: what will the next wave be? AI-native balance-sheet managers? Sovereign digital rails? Tokenized collateral moving through mainstream credit? Or something we haven’t named yet?

I’d love to hear your take.