Mücahit Gündebahar is the CEO & Co-Founder of Fimple, an AI-native, API-first, composable financial platform serving banks, NBFIs and fintechs across the GCC, Türkiye and beyond.
Across the Gulf, the checkout is becoming an important part of the customer journey for retailers. Fashion platforms, grocery apps, airlines, telcos and property developers are all adding a way to pay later, split a bill, hold a wallet balance or earn credit on spend. The logic is sound. Finance often sits at the moment of highest intent, giving brands another opportunity to shape the customer relationship.
Yet many of these launches follow the same script. A partnership is signed, IT scopes the integration, a lending partner supplies the product, and marketing is handed a finished feature to promote. The result can be modest adoption, an experience that feels bolted on, and little new understanding of how customers actually want to use financial services.
“The problem is rarely the technology. It is who was in the room when the decisions were made.”
Finance is part of the experience, not beside it. Embedded finance allows non-financial brands to offer services such as payments, credit, wallets or insurance within their existing customer journeys.
“Finance is part of the experience, not beside it.”
When a customer chooses to pay for a sofa in instalments, they are not thinking about a credit product. They are thinking about the sofa, the delivery date, and whether they can afford it this month. Every step of that flow, from how the option is presented to how a missed payment is communicated, shapes how they feel about the retailer. The lender’s name may appear in the small print, but the experience still reflects on the brand.
That makes embedded finance a customer experience decision as much as a financial one. Many of the questions that shape whether customers actually use it are marketing questions. Which segments actually want credit, and which would prefer rewards or a stored balance? At what point in the journey does a financial option feel helpful rather than pushy? How should the brand speak to a customer who is struggling to repay? What does the product say about the brand’s values?
“No core system or compliance checklist can answer those questions. They belong to the people who understand the customer.”
Four decisions marketing should help shape
The first is the proposition. Too many brands launch the same generic instalment option their competitors already offer. A home improvement retailer might be better served by project-based financing tied to a renovation plan; a grocery app by a family wallet with spending controls. The financial product should fit the brand and what its customers actually need.
The second is the journey. Friction in finance is not always bad; a clear affordability step can build trust. But it has to be designed with the same care as the rest of the app, in the brand’s own voice, in Arabic and English, and tested with real customers. When onboarding hands the customer to a third-party screen that looks and sounds different, trust drops at exactly the wrong moment.
The third is the data. Embedded finance can give brands insight into how customers use financial products alongside their wider purchasing behaviour. With the right consent and governance, those insights can inform segmentation, personalisation and loyalty strategy. Brands should understand what data is available through the partnership and how it can be used.
The fourth is measurement. Success should not be judged only by the number of customers selecting a payment option. Brands should examine whether the service improves conversion, repeat purchases, average order value, retention and customer lifetime value, while also monitoring complaints, repayment difficulties and customer trust.
Why Infrastructure Still Matters
None of this makes the banking layer any less important. In fact, the customer experience that marketing teams design is only possible if the infrastructure underneath is flexible enough to support it.
A brand may want to test an instalment plan with one customer segment, adapt it for another market or change the proposition based on how customers respond. The technology underneath needs to be flexible enough to support those changes without rebuilding the product each time. It also needs to connect smoothly with regulated banking capabilities and licensed partners while meeting the requirements of each market.
Speed matters, but in financial services it has to come with the right controls, compliance and customer protections.
A Different Brief
For marketing and CX leaders in the region, the shift is simple to describe and harder to execute.
“Stop treating embedded finance as an IT project that marketing promotes at launch.”
Bring marketing and CX into the brief from the beginning by asking: Who is it for? What customer problem does it solve? How should it feel? And how will you measure whether it strengthens the relationship? From there, technology, banking and compliance teams can determine how to deliver it safely and at scale.
“The brands that succeed with embedded finance in the Gulf will not necessarily be those offering the most financial options.”
They will be those that use finance to solve a genuine customer need and make it feel like a natural part of the customer experience.
Mücahit Gündebahar currently holds the roles of Co-founder and CEO at Fimple, where he utilises his extensive 25-year background in banking IT to spearhead strategic initiatives and foster innovation within the fintech industry. Prior to joining Fimple, Gündebahar served as the CEO of a prominent core banking producer affiliated with a leading participation bank in Turkey, where he previously held the position of CIO.
Disclaimer: This article was originally written by the author. Views expressed are the author’s own. All rights belong to the original author.
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