The fintech landscape in MENA and Africa is rapidly expanding—but many platforms face a critical challenge: limited capital for technology upgrades.
While innovation accelerates across the region, infrastructure often lags behind. According to CB Insights (2024), global fintech funding dropped by 48% in 2023, with early-stage companies bearing the brunt of the slowdown. In MENA, fintech investments exceeded $2 billion, but a disproportionate share went to late-stage ventures. Startups and mid-sized platforms are now expected to scale with minimal resources—while meeting increasing demands for performance, security, and compliance.
The True Cost of Delaying Tech Upgrades
Many platforms continue to operate on outdated systems due to financial constraints. However, this short-term approach results in long-term operational inefficiencies:
- Technical debt increases the cost of future upgrades by 30–50%. (BCG, 2024)
- Legacy infrastructure reduces time-to-market for new features by 40%. (McKinsey Digital Banking Report, 2023)
- Security risks also increase—84% of financial services cyber incidents involve legacy systems. (IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index, 2023)
The Infrastructure Gap in MENA & Africa
Despite bold fintech ambitions, many companies still rely on outdated, monolithic platforms that don’t support modular scaling, cloud adoption, or real-time analytics.
- Only 27% of fintechs in Africa use cloud-native infrastructure.
- In MENA, 54% of fintech executives cite platform scalability as a key barrier to growth. (PwC Middle East Fintech Report, 2024)
Rethinking the Investment Strategy
Fintech platforms don’t need to overhaul everything at once. Instead, successful players are adopting incremental, modular modernization strategies:
- Composable architecture that allows scaling feature-by-feature
- Pay-as-you-grow cloud models to align infrastructure spend with customer growth
- Pre-integrated compliance and AI-ready components, reducing future cost and complexity
How Cubic Helps
At Cubic, we support fintechs across emerging markets in building cost-effective, scalable, and secure platforms. Our solutions prioritize modular deployment, built-in compliance, and seamless integrations—enabling faster time-to-market without capital-intensive overhauls.
Contact us to explore how your fintech can grow without technical or financial bottlenecks.