The ex-Goldman Sachs associate leading Revolut's expanding Dubai team
Revolut is collecting banking licenses. Now that it has one in the UK, it's targeting the Middle East, which could prove just as difficult. The fintech has been steadily growing its Dubai office, but now has a new face in charge.
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Ambareen Musa announced yesterday that she has joined Revolut as its UAE CEO. She has been an entrepreneur and CEO in Dubai for over a decade; she founded financial comparison site Souqalmal in 2012 and served as its CEO until it was acquired and turned into a financial education platform, Yabi, in 2022. She remained CEO of Yabi until she left for Revolut.
Musa first moved from London to Dubai as a consultant with Bain after completing an MBA, during which she interned as a summer associate in Goldman Sachs' sales and trading division. She left Bain after two years to build out MasterCard's Middle East advisors team.
Revolut was able to roll out its products en masse in Europe after getting a banking license in Lithuania and using it to passport its way into other EU countries. Breaking into the Middle East won't be so easy. Musa said in a previous interview with MasterCard that getting all the right licenses "is probably one of the biggest challenges of any fintech here." She said the region is often misperceived as a "700-million-people market", when in reality it's a lot more segmented and "extremely local."
Nonetheless, it's an area Revolut is placing big bets on; Bloomberg reported last month that the firm has 140 employees in Dubai. Open roles available in the city include a head of product engineering role, and a user-experience internship with Revolut's coveted Rev-celerator program.
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