The fintech boom in the UAE and wider MENA region has created a paradox. There are more platforms, more capital, and more innovation than ever, yet standing out has never been harder. For a new generation of decision-makers, the first touchpoint with a fintech brand is no longer a website, a pitch deck, or even Google.
It’s an AI assistant.
That shift is already measurable. Around 70% of Gen Z adults using technology daily now turn to generative AI tools like ChatGPT every week, Ema Fulga, Founder of Decipher, told The Finance 360. Among Millennials, 52% rely on generative AI to do their jobs, while 74% use it to research local products and services. In the UAE, adoption is even more striking: 64% of the working-age population already uses AI tools regularly, placing the country at the top of global rankings.
For Ema Fulga, this is not a future trend but it’s the new battleground for fintech visibility.
“AI-powered search is quickly taking over,” she says. “In the UAE, it’s going to be even bigger since around 64 % of the working-age population in the UAE already uses AI tools regularly. That puts the country at the very top of global adoption rankings.”
Unlike traditional search engines, AI assistants don’t just retrieve links; they interpret intent. They invite longer, more nuanced queries, often four words or more, and respond conversationally. That context changes everything.
“Since they gather all this information on our preferences, we tend to ‘trust’ the recommendations they make. This is something we didn’t have with traditional engines like Google, and it’s exactly why their recommendations are so powerfull,” the Decipher founder added.
That trust, Ema Fulga explains, now directly shapes how potential employees, investors, suppliers, and customers perceive fintech brands, often before they ever visit a company’s website.
Why Some Fintechs Keep Showing Up, and Others Don’t
As AI assistants like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overview increasingly guide research and decision-making, a pattern is emerging. The fintech companies that dominate AI-generated answers aren’t necessarily the flashiest, they’re the most structured.
“The fintech companies that win in this space are the ones that strategise their content, instead of just creating a nice-looking website with generic content,” she said.
Winning visibility, she says, has less to do with trends and more to do with coverage across the entire decision journey, from discovery to consideration to purchase.
Take buy-now-pay-later platform Tabby.
“When you ask an AI for ‘best ways to pay in installments in Dubai,’ Tabby is almost always the primary citation because of its reviews and cross-channel content strategy,” according to Ema Fulga.
The same applies to investment platform Sarwa, which built clear, technical yet accessible explanations of financial concepts.
“They developed clear, structured, technical yet accessible content that covers financial definitions and summaries that LLMs love to scrape,” she adds.
In short: AI assistants reward clarity, authority, and depth, not marketing gloss.
The Compliance Problem And How Smart Fintechs Solve It
For financial services, discoverability can’t come at the cost of regulation. But Fulga argues that AI optimisation and compliance don’t conflict, if content is constructed properly.
“This is a complex topic because of the nature of the financial industry, but it really all depends on how you construct your content, both off-page and on-page,” Ema Fulga said.
Her advice starts with clarity.
“Make it easy for AI engines to identify their official, compliance stance, which means including specific tags like licence numbers, regulatory body (e.g., ‘Regulated by the DFSA’) and specific product categories.”
Instead of chasing broad keywords, fintechs should lean into semantic precision.
“Instead of writing about ‘best loans’, focus on ‘SME lending criteria in Abu Dhabi under ADGM guidelines’. This long-tail, technical term shows expertise and it’s compliant.”
Equally important is where compliance lives on the page.
“Place ‘compliance anchors’ next to key data points instead of writing a general disclaimer at the bottom of the page.”
Why Traffic Is Falling But Sales Are Rising
One of the most counterintuitive outcomes of AI-driven search is that many companies are seeing lower organic traffic, even as leads and conversions increase.
“That’s because the ‘convincing’ part happens off-site, during the conversations people have with their AI assistants,” she said.
As a result, traditional metrics are losing relevance.
“Fintech companies should start focusing less on volume of organic traffic, time on page, and bounce rate, and more on things like Brand Score, Branded Search Volume, Mentions and Citations.”
These indicators reveal something more powerful than clicks: authority.
“Are your mentions going up? It means both AI assistants believe you have more authority, but also, people are leaving good reviews and talking well about your company online.”
How AI Actually ‘Reads’ Your Brand
A common mistake fintech brands make is optimising for keywords instead of meaning. “AI models understand the world through entities (people, brands, concepts), not keywords.”
That distinction matters. “Instead of writing about ‘our digital wallets are safe’, write ‘our digital wallet is regulated by the…’.”
AI assistants don’t take claims at face value. They look for entity validation, regulation, authority, and verifiable context.
Fulga also issues a clear warning: “Ask your marketing team to never let AI auto-publish content. That’s very dangerous and most likely non-compliant since it means giving AI freedom to publish financial advice on your brand’s behalf.”
Why the Middle East Has a First-Mover Advantage
While fintech brands in the US and UK fight for marginal visibility gains, the Middle East offers something rare: open territory.
“LLMs are trained heavily on data written in English. While in the UK or the US, fintech brands fight for 0.1% increases in English-speaking AI results, brands in the Middle East can capture entire categories and quickly.”
One overlooked opportunity? “Start by publishing a definitive, high-authority Arabic glossary for fintech terms. Since there’s so little competition, you’re likely to get cited immediately.”
Another lies in local AI models. “While everybody’s optimising for ChatGPT and AI Overview, you can optimise for local AIs like Jais and Falcon and dominate those.”
The 30-Day Rule of AI Visibility
AI search doesn’t reward static content. “If it’s older than 30 days, AI assistants won’t give it as much importance since other companies have ‘fresher’ content.”
Future-proofing, Fulga says, means tracking prompts, mentions, and competitive visibility — not just publishing and hoping for the best.
And if fintech brands had to focus on just three things? “Create pillar pages… Make sure the structured data is updated and fully optimised… Publish content cross-channel.”
In the age of AI search, visibility isn’t about being louder. It’s about being trusted, by machines first, and humans second.
