Senior banking and payments executives assembled at the Middle East Banking Innovation Summit, and among them was Sends CEO Alona Shevtsova, who joined the debate on how real-time payments, digital wallets and cross-border infrastructure are evolving.
Banking, fintech and technology leaders converged on Jumeirah Emirates Towers in Dubai on 17 September for the 17th staging of the Middle East Banking Innovation Summit (MEBIS 2026), and among the industry experts contributing was Alona Shevtsova, CEO of Sends, who took her place in the panel discussion “Payment Innovation in Banking: Real Time, Cross Border and Wallet Driven Evolution,” a session devoted to the forces that will shape the region’s next generation of payments.
Alongside Alona Shevtsova on the panel were Hasan Jaber, Deputy CEO at Al Fardan Exchange and CEO of AlfaNow; Ananth Srivatsa, Executive Vice President at RAKBANK; Mohamed Hussein, Head of Banking Solutions Center of Excellence at BANK NXT; Kamran Khan, Executive Director, Product Innovation & Implementation (EMEA) at First Abu Dhabi Bank; Ashish Gupta, Head of Digital, Retail SME and Sales at BankDhofar; and Naveed Minhas, EMEA IPC Payments Leader at IBM.
Contributors weighed up where financial institutions are already deriving concrete benefit from instant settlement, the ways in which wallets and ever more interconnected digital finance ecosystems are reshaping what customers now expect, and the work still outstanding if payments across borders are to become swifter and leaner.
Interoperability ran through much of the conversation, and for good reason: because money now travels across platforms, currencies and jurisdictions instantaneously, banks and fintech companies are left to link long-established banking infrastructure with newer payment rails while keeping security, compliance and operational resilience intact.
“The future of payments will not be defined by a single technology or payment method. The real opportunity is in connecting the ecosystem around the customer. Real-time payments, wallets and cross-border infrastructure need to work together so that moving money becomes simpler for the user, while the technology, compliance and risk infrastructure behind that experience continues to evolve,” remarked Alona Shevtsova, chief executive officer of Sends.
MEBIS adds to a series of international industry conversations in which Alona Shevtsova has featured across 2026: earlier in the year she appeared on expert panels at PAY360 in London, one covering agentic AI in AML and KYC and another the evolution of embedded finance, while she also contributed to Riyadh discussions centred on AI, risk, blockchain and digital finance.
Her Dubai appearance equally signals how far Sends has moved into the Middle East financial ecosystem, in a region that keeps directing investment towards real-time payment infrastructure, digital banking and emerging models of cross-border financial services.
Drawing C-level banking executives, technology leaders and innovators from across the Middle East, MEBIS has built a 2026 programme running from AI and intelligent automation, digital banking and payments innovation through to open banking, embedded finance, cybersecurity, data strategy and next-generation financial infrastructure.
About Sends
Headquartered in the UK, Sends is a financial technology company delivering payment services to businesses and individuals that operate in domestic as well as international markets, and Smartflow Payments Limited, which trades as Sends, holds Financial Conduct Authority authorisation as an Electronic Money Institution.
