The global fintech landscape enters 2026 in a period of recalibration. According to FinTech Global, overall deal volumes declined through 2025, with projections showing a nearly 20 per cent drop from the previous year. Yet funding remained stable, driven by fewer but larger investments as capital shifted toward mature platforms with proven models and responsible scale.
The average deal size in the first three quarters of 2025 reached $24.5m, underscoring the global move toward selectivity and operational discipline. In contrast, the UAE continued moving in the opposite direction. As of November 2025, fintech startups had secured approximately $982m in funding, reflecting strong investor confidence and sustained market appetite. In H1 2025 alone, fintechs attracted $265.8m, including $215.6m in Q1.
Against this backdrop, the UAE advanced its fintech architecture with clarity and purpose. In 2025, the sector progressed with major regulatory and technological initiatives, including the Digital Dirham, the country’s retail central bank digital currency, and expanded open finance frameworks, enabling secure API-based data sharing and service initiation. Updated regulations across digital payments, tokenisation and fintech innovations reinforced the UAE’s position as a market designed for innovation and built for scale. Beyond fintech, the UAE accelerated its technological leadership with the launch of Stargate UAE in May 2025.
Developed by G42 in partnership with NVIDIA, OpenAI, Oracle and Cisco, it introduced the first frontier-scale AI infrastructure deployed outside the US. This milestone signals the country’s intent to build an economy powered by AI at scale.
At Astra Tech, these shifts align directly with our strategic direction for botim. With more than 157 million users globally and 8.5 million in the UAE, botim is now positioned as a fintech-first, AI-native ecosystem delivering everyday financial access with maturity and scale. In 2025, we unified remittances, payments, gold investment, salary tools, credit solutions and multi-currency accounts under botim money, consolidating the services users rely on most into one trusted platform. As our ecosystem developed, one priority became clear. The UAE now has world-class fintech and AI infrastructure, yet financial participation still varies across segments.
The gap is not technology; it is confidence. Many individuals, particularly within underserved communities, hesitate to use financial tools not due to lack of access but unfamiliarity. In 2026, Astra Tech will continue investing in digital financial literacy, native-language support and simplified product design to ensure every person can manage, save and borrow with clarity and confidence.
Technology plays a central role in enabling this progress. In 2025, we redesigned botim’s interface for simplicity and accessibility across all user groups. AI is now embedded across the platform and within internal operations, enabling multilingual execution, personalised insights, enhanced security and more efficient workflows in compliance, service and risk. This reflects our philosophy: simplified by design, powered by intelligence. A defining trend shaping 2026 is the rise of behaviour-led, AI-guided financial experiences within communication platforms. Users increasingly treat communication and financial actions as a single flow.
To meet this shift, botim is structuring its financial ecosystem around a simple journey: Meet, Move, Manage, Multiply. Meet is discovery through conversation. The move is seamless money movement. Manage is clarity through AI-driven insights. Multiply is long-term progress through savings, investments and responsible credit. A major shift also took place in 2025. botim transitioned from a communications-led platform with financial features into the UAE’s first fintech-first, AI-native ecosystem for everyday money management.
Our next phase focuses on extending our fintech capabilities to broaden access and accelerate financial participation in our main corridors, including the Philippines, India, Egypt and Pakistan.
