How UAE Finance Is Redefining Innovation Through Impact

Abu Ebeid’s route to software CEO and Co-Founder was anything but conventional. After graduating with honors in civil engineering from the American University of Sharjah in 2013, he spent close to a decade in a family’s construction business, contributing to some of the projects that helped shape modern Dubai and Abu Dhabi from major developments to landmark buildings. The environment taught him a mindset he still leans on today. “My main mentor was His Excellency Retired Major General Mohammed Saif Binshafar, who was like a father to me and taught me how to grow with steadiness and increase my credibility over time.”

“In construction, you’re a soldier,” he says. “You’re responsible for delivering a building properly, to specification. You follow the right blueprints. Discipline & consistency are the main keys for success.”

Then came 2020 and with it, forced stillness. Like many professionals, Abu Ebeid used the covid lockdown to retrain. Unlike most, he did it with intensity and direction, completing Harvard Business School specialisation courses in entrepreneurship, innovation and fintech and sharpening both his fintech understanding and his negotiation skills. “My two best friends Abdulaziz Mohammed Binshafar who is my business partner now and Saeed Sultan AlDhaheri were the driving force behind me to enroll in Harvard courses and were the best mentors. “They believed in me and were the best supporting system.” He says

It was during that phase – studying how global institutions such JP Morgan, Citi build payment systems, create new financial products, and scale financial services, that a new idea began to take shape.

“I’ve always been inspired by the large financial institutions,” he says. “I was reading a lot about Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JP Morgan and other influential leaders in the financial industry. And I thought, ‘why don’t we build something here for financial digital transformation? Since my childhood I was inspired by Bill Gates, Co-Founder of Microsoft and how the operating system invention changed our life.’

The “something” became Global Software Solutions Group (GSS Group), founded in 2021, with impeccable timing. That same year, the Central Bank of the UAE launched its Financial Infrastructure Transformation program, a sweeping initiative built on nine pillars including instant payments, open finance, a domestic card scheme, ekyc, central bank digital currency and etc. “When we founded GSS Group in 2021, the Central Bank’s announcement came at exactly the right moment, the stars aligned,” he says.

Abu Ebeid’s leadership philosophy is explicitly shaped by the UAE. He speaks with genuine reverence about the country’s founding father the late Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan and the current leadership of the UAE and about learning from His Highness Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Chairman of the Central Bank of the UAE. “I have learned a lot from His Highness’s Vision. I’ve been watching his interviews in the World Government Summit and other channels, and I was really inspired” he says.

GSS Group began with the country’s largest bank, First Abu Dhabi Bank PJSC, and has since expanded to 23 UAE financial institutions, including banks like Emirates NBD PJSC, United Arab Bank, Al Maryah Bank, financial companies like Finance House, Deem Finance and Reem Finance, insurance houses like Orient Insurance and Al Wathba Insurance, and exchange providers like Lulu Exchange, Lari Exchange , Index Exchange and etc., including also fintech licensed companies like Comera Pay. Much of its work is invisible to consumers, enabling real-time payments, domestic and cross-boarder payments and open finance integration across the UAE’s financial system. The firm’s payments suite spans cloud-ready capabilities including real-time transfers, cheque clearing, payroll, and direct debits, built to scale on an enterprise-grade low-code platform. “I have been blessed to have partners like Praveen Sekar and Saleem Ahmed who supported me and GSS Group to the world of banking technology and especially into payments,” he says.

“Our technology is infrastructure,” Abu Ebeid explains. “We are the hidden guardian. We don’t always see the end user, but we sit as a layer within banks and financial institutions, and within the authentication and service providers they rely on.”

It’s telling that he consistently describes software through the lens of construction. To him, the worlds are not opposites; they are continuations. “The fundamentals still apply,” he insists. “Leadership and discipline come with passion and experience, your team is the backbone of the firm, you need good advisors, highly skilled committed team members, and proper project management and governance.” The discipline he talks about – the soldier’s mentality, the blueprint mindset, has helped translate his early career into a company that now employs 250 people across the UAE and India.

But for all the talk of platforms and payments, Abu Ebeid’s motivation is strikingly human. He returns again to financial inclusion, and to the practical friction that still shapes everyday life for many of the UAE’s workers, particularly those sending money home. In his view, the next leap in financial infrastructure must be judged not only by speed and resilience, but by how it improves life for the people who rely on it most.

“To serve the blue-collar workers and every human, I believe it’s their right as humans, to have access to different ways of finance,” he says, “transferring money cross-border can be a challenge sometimes. For cross-border remittances, they stand in queues at remittance houses, they lose out on rates – it takes time and effort. What the UAE is doing is making it easier, so people can send money from their phones, whether they’re at home or at their staff accommodation from their mobile apps with many alternatives.”

That focus is not a corporate social responsibility afterthought. Abu Ebeid traces his fascination with democratizing technology back to his childhood – specifically to a birthday present in 1995: Windows 95, in its iconic blue box. “That era changed my mindset,” he recalls. “I was hearing about Bill Gates and what he and his colleagues did once in history. They invented something that changed everything.”

To Abu Ebeid, software offered something construction never could: compounding impact. “Construction multiplies by two,” he says. “Software can multiply by twenty.”

The same philosophy shapes GSS Group’s strategy. Beyond its proprietary payment platforms, the company has worked to become what Abu Ebeid calls a “one-stop shop” for financial institutions – curating a partner ecosystem across technologies and geographies, and building credibility not just through code, but through consistency in delivery.

And credibility, he believes, is the real differentiator, particularly in a market where trust is a prerequisite, not a bonus. “Credibility matters even more than the product,” he says. “When we started the technology company, people at the financial institution connected the dots. They said: these are the people who run a construction company – they are trusted. So, let’s try them with software.” And the try was worth it.

That trust is built and tested in the day-to-day realities of banking delivery. Today, GSS Group has large teams embedded within customer organisations, working alongside bank and ecosystem stakeholders to deliver and operate critical capabilities. The relationships can blur the line between vendor and partner, and Abu Ebeid embraces that responsibility. He recounts a recent call from a chief operating officer at a major UAE bank: “He told me, ‘I would expect you to answer even if it’s midnight if there’s a problem.’ I said, ‘Consider it done.’”

The approach has earned formal recognition too. Under Abu Ebeid’s leadership, GSS Group was the first software company to take two pilot banks live on the UAE’s real-time payments programe (UAEIPP), and the company has received multiple industry awards for payments solutions and implementation, Abu Ebeid has been awarded as the best technology CEO of the year in 2024.

Mahmoud has also been involved in investments in artificial intelligence startups in the UAE, including VIAI Technology, a leading Emirati advanced technology company focused on building an integrated artificial intelligence ecosystem across sports, health, and safety.

VIAI aims to deploy real-time, privacy-first

AI solutions that enhance performance, reduce injury risks, and enable early detection of health issues for athletes, young people, and workers in Abu Dhabi and globally.

It has also secured memberships in industry bodies including the Payments Council of India and IAMAI, and has been recognised by ecosystem stakeholders, including the Central Bank of the UAE and Al Etihad Payments, with invitations to share lessons learned. GSS Group has also been invited by Abu Dubai Chamber for a delegation visit to Mumbai to explore ways of collaboration for the digital transformation.

And about the balance he believes great leaders strike: empathy, backed by resolve. “You should be firm on timelines,” he says . “But there are times you have to be flexible for other pillars. We’re not here as computers.”

He also cites Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s emphasis on empathy and empowerment. “You must make colleagues feel this is their company,” Abu Ebeid says. “The company’s success depends on your team. You delegate, and you give trust.” It is a style that seems to work. GSS Group has grown from three people to 250 in under four years, with partnerships now including a Goldman Sachs-funded firm.

Looking ahead, he sees the UAE’s fintech ambitions as still in early innings, with new licenses, new use cases, and a growing ecosystem of partnerships and regulated innovation. He credits the Central Bank of the UAE for creating the space for innovation. “Over the past five years, the Central Bank of the UAE has made substantial positive changes, notably by inviting fintech firms to establish themselves locally under independent financial licenses,” he says.

For GSS Group, that means doubling down on the invisible layer: building the platforms, connections, and operational confidence that allow banks and financial entities to move faster and safely. GSS Group has hosted various summits in partnership with the UAE Banks Federation (UBF), to create awareness sessions for financial institutions on the digital transformation happening in the UAE. This can be seen in the Open Finance initiative, where GSS Group presented the best practices for the Open Finance framework and demonstrated their solution that made it easy for the banks to connect to the central hub of Open Finance (Nebras).

Asked what he is most proud of, Abu Ebeid doesn’t talk about revenue or market share. He talks about people. “First, I’m proud of my team,” he says. “If we look back, we started with three people. Now we are 250.” Then he returns to the point that seems to anchor everything: “We are proud of making things easier for people when they have the ease for transferring funds.”

In a region reshaping the future of finance, Abu Ebeid shows that true innovation isn’t driven by technology alone. It begins with belief, and the resolve to create systems that serve everyone better.

It’s a modest claim for a company sitting beneath so much of the country’s financial infrastructure. But perhaps that’s the point. The best infrastructure, whether concrete or code – is the kind you hardly notice. Outside, the rain continues to fall. Inside, the system holds.