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Mastercard will join the Arab Monetary Fund's (AMF's) Buna cross-border real-time gross settlement (RTGS) payment platform as a direct participant. The collaboration will provide a simple, efficient and practical solution to current challenges that include high costs, long wait times and lack of transparency when moving funds into and out of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. By leveraging existing infrastructure and connections, the collaboration avoids the need for major investments or adjustments from participant banks.

In the UAE, Dubai SME has allocated AED20 million "for the capital guarantee scheme launched by its financial arm, The Mohammed Bin Rashid Fund (The Fund), in partnership with Beehive, the first regulated peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platform in the Middle East & North Africa (MENA) region."

"The Czech National Bank has always promoted its technological neutrality. It cannot therefore force the population to innovate that is not driven by societal demand. However, Covid-19 showed us how quickly the population can change their habits. Crises are generally a catalyst, an accelerator of development that would otherwise take many years. Although we are at the beginning in this area, it is possible that digital cash will in some form be part of the future of the Czech koruna as well."

The Central Bank of the UAE (CBUAE) is reportedly operationalizing its domestic digital dirham central bank digital currency (CBDC). It is encouraging all UAE commercial banks and payments processors to participate in a pilot integration with the CBUAE digital dirham issuing node and has decreed digital dirham adoption by all UAE licensed financial institutions (LSIs) by 2026. In the immediate term, those LSIs are being encouraged to develop digital dirham use cases in the CBUAE sandbox.