How Deep Payments Infrastructure Creates Real Fintech Advantage

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Payments in emerging markets are often discussed as infrastructure.

But the real differentiation happens in how deeply payments are embedded into business operations.

In the final episode of this special Qatar Development Bank series of Couchonomics with Arjun, Arjun sits down in Doha with Saad Ishfaq, CEO of TESS Payments, to unpack how a payments company built for Qatar is scaling by solving real operational pain, not just processing transactions.

TESS Payments is a QCB-licensed payment service provider designed specifically for the Qatari market. Rather than chasing regional expansion, Saad explains why the company chose to go deep instead of wide, focusing on enterprise-grade flexibility, managed services, and bespoke integrations for large organisations across real estate, government, and critical infrastructure.

The conversation explores how payments sit at the centre of SME enablement, why micro and small businesses remain underserved across the GCC, and how fintechs and banks must collaborate rather than compete. Saad also shares how TESS evolved beyond payments into CFO tooling and digital lending, including a new sandboxed lending platform addressing Qatar’s blue-collar workforce.

From owning core infrastructure to navigating bank partnerships, regulatory sandboxes, and product adjacencies, this episode offers a grounded look at how fintech scale is built inside regulated markets.

🎙️ In this episode:

• Why TESS Payments is built for Qatar, not regional expansion

• Payments as an embedded operational layer, not a commodity

• Solving CFO and CTO pain through deep integrations

• SME and micro-SME challenges in the GCC

• Why banks and fintechs must work together to scale impact

• Building proprietary payments infrastructure in a crowded market

• Regulatory sandboxes as a growth enabler

• Expanding from payments into digital lending

• Addressing financial access for blue-collar workers

• Qatar’s role as a fintech launchpad

• Founder lessons from Pakistan to Qatar

• Grit, resilience, and building through constraint

👉 Watch the full conversation to understand how payments, regulation, and fintech innovation come together when products are built with local reality in mind.

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CHAPTERS

00:00 Qatar Development Bank series wrap-up
01:30 Introducing TESS Payments and Saad Ishfaq
04:00 Key global and regional payment trends
07:00 SME and micro-SME challenges in the GCC
10:30 Embedding payments into enterprise operations
13:30 Proprietary infrastructure and differentiation
16:00 Working with banks as acquiring partners
18:30 Payments post-FIFA and infrastructure realities
20:00 Expanding beyond payments into CFO tooling
22:00 Digital lending and sandbox experimentation
25:00 Regulation as an enabler, not a blocker
27:30 Scaling depth versus geographic expansion
29:00 Founder journey from Pakistan to Qatar
31:30 Lessons on resilience, impact, and fintech scale