What it means to Dubai-it

It’s an open secret that Ziina, which means “beauty” in Arabic, is named after my mother.

Now that His Highness Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defence of the UAE, and Chairman of The Executive Council of Dubai, has shared that story, I can finally talk about it a little more openly.

And what better moment to share it than this one: we Dubai-ed it!

Winning the Dubai-it Award, alongside some of Dubai’s biggest brands including Emirates Airline and property developer Emaar, is a huge honour for us. It is also a responsibility. We have had the opportunity to build a company in a city that gives ambitious entrepreneurs the space to think bigger, move faster and turn ideas into businesses with real economic value. That opportunity carries an obligation to keep raising our own bar and to help create more opportunities for others to build.

HH Sheikh Hamdan announced that Ziina had won the Dubai-it Award for Companies in the Field of Business. The award recognises our success in developing a financial platform built in Dubai, offering entrepreneurs easy and fast payment solutions and evolving in record time from a peer to peer transfer app into an integrated financial platform for consumers and businesses.

In announcing the award, HH Sheikh Hamdan said:

“Built in Dubai by young Arab entrepreneurs, it made accepting payments by phone simpler for thousands of businesses. Payment volume surpassed $1.5 billion in record time.”

He also spoke about how my siblings, Sarah and Talal, and I saw an opportunity in Dubai to build an integrated financial platform and named it after our mother. His description of Ziina as a company “building from the ground up, growing with ambition and creating impact that reaches beyond the business” captures what we set out to do and what continues to drive us.

We started with an idea: make moving money simpler for people and businesses across the UAE. One of our early priorities was making it easier for business owners to accept payments directly through their phones, without separate payment devices. We redesigned the mobile payments experience to make it simpler and smoother, then continued building on that foundation.

Over four years, we launched more than 13 financial products and features, enabling individuals and businesses to send, receive, save and spend money. Today, we serve 500,000 users and support 290,000 business owners. The number of active businesses on our platform grew by 163% in a single year. These figures reflect the trust people have placed in us and the role financial technology can play in supporting business growth.

Dubai raises the ceiling on what is possible. It makes you think bigger, move faster and set your sights higher than you might have imagined. That spirit has shaped Ziina from day one.

The city's ambition, openness to new ideas and forward thinking approach to regulation create an environment where entrepreneurs can build, working alongside government and regulators to bring new solutions to market. The partnership between the public and private sectors has been important to our ability to develop a financial platform here and grow it at pace.

His Excellency Mohammad Abdullah Al Gergawi, Minister of Cabinet Affairs of the UAE and Chairman of the Executive Office of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, spoke about Dubai’s role in helping young entrepreneurs turn ideas into successful businesses. He recognised Ziina for translating those opportunities into “Arab technological capabilities and tangible economic value.”

That speaks to our ambition: to build financial services for people across the Arab world, shaped by a deep understanding of each individual market and how its people live, manage money and run their businesses. Emirati nationals were among our earliest adopters and today make up 20% of our user base, our largest customer segment. Their trust has reinforced our conviction that financial services must be built around the people they serve, with a genuine understanding of local behaviours, expectations and needs.

At Ziina, craftsmanship and care shape everything we build, from our technology and products to the experience we create for customers. That commitment comes from our mother, who taught us to aim high, reach for what might seem impossible and bring craft and intention to everything we do. Naming the company after her was a way of carrying those values into the business we set out to build.

We’re proud of what we’re building in Dubai and excited for what lies ahead. This award is an honour and a responsibility. Dubai gave us the opportunity to turn an idea into a business, and we want to help create that same opportunity for others. We want to help more entrepreneurs bring their ideas to life, build companies that create lasting value and realise ambitions that once seemed out of reach. Entrepreneurs backing entrepreneurs. That’s what it means to Dubai-it, and it’s a responsibility we take seriously.

Faisal Toukan, Co-Founder & CEO, Ziina