Mo Ali Yusuf, Arpit Mehta, and Srijan Shetty, each with a strong background in finance and technology, shared a belief in the power of regulated digital assets infrastructure. This belief led them to establish Fuze in December 2023, a fintech startup now a regulated digital assets infrastructure platform in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
The startup helps financial service providers strategise, organise, and implement digital asset infrastructure securely and quickly. It offers digital assets as a service platform that helps banks and other fintechs integrate and embed regulated digital asset products in a B2B2C fashion.
It also offers an over-the-counter (OTC) service, supporting institutions and funds in interacting with and conducting larger trades of digital assets.
Growing need for digital asset infrastructure
Digital asset infrastructure helps increase the use of cryptocurrencies worldwide. It is generally a multifaceted technological discipline embraced by crypto wallets, liquidity providers, and cryptocurrency exchanges.
Fuze’s solutions can handle the complexities of the blockchain and other regulatory overheads for enterprises, enabling them to offer digital assets like cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, tokenised assets, and central bank digital coins.
Reports suggest the MENA region is already the sixth largest, with over $400 billion in blockchain transactions between July 2022 and June 2023. It accounted for over 7.2 per cent of all global transactions.
In 2023, the startup announced a seed funding of $14 million, one of the largest for a digital assets’ infrastructure startup in the region. Led by Further Ventures, the round saw participation from New York’s Liberty City Ventures. Based out of Abu Dhabi’s Hub71, Fuze, as Yusuf explained, provides clarity for banks and fintechs, enabling accessible infrastructure to unleash digital assets.
“We offer a Digital-Assets-as-a-Service platform that enables banks and fintechs to integrate and embed regulated digital assets products in a B2B2C fashion, as well as an Over-The-Counter (OTC) service that supports institutions, funds, and HNIs (high net-worth individuals) to interface and conduct larger trades of digital assets,” said Yusuf.
Building the product
He added that it is a first-of-its-kind, regulated digital assets infrastructure platform in MENA that helps financial services providers strategise, organise, and implement digital assets infrastructure and quickly and securely launch regulated blockchain products.
Given the nature of the product, its development stage, and the kind of customers Fuze serves, A/B testing wasn’t a luxury the team had. What works is keeping an eye on the ball and evolving and improving as they grow.
“One of our key lessons has been around what truly matters to enterprise customers and the fact that each enterprise operates in completely different ways, so you have to be adaptable to their operational, technology and compliance needs,” explained Yusuf.
Working closely with regulators
He added technology in the financial space is only as good as what it enables. Usually, that would mean making things faster, cheaper and/or more secure.
“Collaboration is essential to achieving successful implementation. One important facet of finance is that there are deep contextual reasons why some things are done the way they are, even if they seem completely inefficient at first glance. Hence, deeply collaborating and understanding the underlying dynamics is crucial before technology can be judiciously applied in each context,” said Yusuf.
It was important for Fuze to ensure they had the right talent and skilled experts to craft the technological infrastructure needed for digital asset adoption. Regulation, too, is important for the evolution of the digital assets industry. Yusuf explained that regulations in such a dynamic sector need the input of the businesses operating in the space to ensure the industry and its operations are safe, secure, legally robust, and economically beneficial.
“That’s why we work closely with regulators to help build trust in the ecosystem. Fuze’s growth will come as institutions, banks, and fintechs continue to expand their requirements for digital asset infrastructure better to serve their institutional, professional, and retail customers,” said Yusuf.
Technology has played a huge part in transforming finance and banking in the last 10 to 15 years. Many technological changes have been consumer-facing, but now there are seismic shifts in how institutions, banks, and financial services providers integrate technology to enhance their processes.
“Thanks to blockchains and associated technologies, we see many more changes coming to the underlying banking and financial plumbing,” Yusuf explained.
Building on the service API product
Fuze is building on its digital assets as a service API product. They are learning from their existing products and building new standalone products for unique products.
“For example, we’ve discovered a specific use-case that explains why a section of customers use OTC (over-the-counter) trading. And, if we can build specifically for that need, it opens up new opportunities for us,” explained Yusuf.
The team is also exploring different and new use cases and products, which are only possible thanks to the unique mix of progressive regulations (particularly in the UAE) and a visionary appetite for change in the region.
“This is why we believe digital assets have such a powerful role. It is a great privilege to be at the epicentre of financial transformation and to be building the future of finance today,” said Yusuf.
