Welcome to Money 2020 Middle East.
Things are in full swing here.
We have tens of thousands of attendees, hundreds of speakers, and we're lucky enough to have one of the speakers here with us, Saud Aswar.
You are with Mastercard, the country manager for Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Jordan, and other Levant.
Thank you for having me and thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak to you.
Well, we're that you're here.
We've seen Mastercard's presence here on the floor.
Tell us a little bit about the role of Mastercard here at this inaugural Middle East Money 2020 conference.
So very excited to be part of this inaugural event Money 2020, 1st in the Middle East.
Welcome.
It's great to have you from all over the world, you and other guests.
Welcome home.
We are a strategic sponsor here at Money 2020.
We are doing 3 things.
The first thing we are doing is we are exhibiting.
We have a beautiful exhibit.
We are showcasing some of our innovations when it comes to agentic AI, cybersecurity, and tools to enable our partners to penetrate and provide to the segment.
We are speaking at multiple panels.
We are sharing our best practices and trying to solve real problems that the market is facing, and we have speakers from all over the region coming to address these problems and share our knowledge.
And then finally we are we are working closely.
We have been working closely with our partners here in Saudi Arabia over over the.
Recent past and we are signing a few strategic deals here at Money.
Tell us more about that.
So hopefully we are signing a deal with the STC Bank, and this is to support them on remittances and cross border.
We are also signing a deal with Hyper Pay, and this is to support them on their product offering and their.
Abilities in that segment, yeah.
So we've got a little bit of an overview of your priorities for the region.
Our one priority all financial services company shares cybersecurity, and you at Mastercard, you guys have committed over 10 billion in cybersecurity innovation in recent years.
Yeah, globally, but let me take a step back and say that by 2028.
This will be globally a $14 trillion problem, cybersecurity.
So it's a big enough problem to solve for, and it's a serious problem.
And as part of our commitment to the kingdom's growth, we have established the center of center of excellence for cybersecurity here in Riyadh.
It is to help our partners and the ecosystem in collaboration with the central bank.
To look at this problem and see how best we can solve it.
So we've been sharing our best practices.
We've been training, we've been simulating along with our partners to hopefully look at this problem more seriously.
We would know that we have also made recent acquisitions globally for other cybersecurity.
Experts, subject matter experts in this field, and we're bringing those, we're excited to bring those best practices here to Saudi and the region.
Yes, it is a huge global problem.
How does that investment translate into practical solutions for the region and globally?
So a couple of things.
And if you look at what the Center of Excellence is up to, we've got global resources, subject matter experts sitting here in Riyadh.
They are talking to our partner banks.
To see how can we simulate cybersecurity threats, and how can we ensure that the systems and processes in place across the banking ecosystem, not only payments um is resilient.
So simulation, so that's preventative.
And we are training.
So we're speaking to our partners staff at staff level and leadership level to both tactically tactically and strategically address the knowledge gap and make sure that everyone is aware because it all starts with us humans, so everyone is aware of how big the problem is.
And then we're speaking with other industry partners to see how can we collaborate and bring efforts together and congregate to solve this problem.
Now, I'd like to shift gears a little bit.
We talked about all of the speakers.
You're one of the speakers.
You actually spoke at a panel about women at the helm of AI and FinTech.
Can you give us a highlight for that?
So there was a recent study, not from the region but outside, but I guess it's relevant to say here.
About 5 years ago, unemployment for fresh graduates was 5%.
So out of 100 fresh grads, 5 remain unemployed.
That was 5 years ago.
The study was refreshed.
It is now 25%, which is a big, huge number, albeit in a different region, but it's a relevant problem.
And when probed the hiring managers, they cited AI as being a potential replacement for what a usual fresher what a usual fresh grad would do.
You take this problem and say, OK.
Women.
So even more concentrated because women and we the globally uh has been um uh uh a pinpoint employing women and uh funding women uh businesses.
And with this problem specifically, it even magnifies it even more.
So At Mastercard we look at Skill based.
Uh, capabilities rather than anything else.
And that has fueled our inclusion engine.
Um, and we have done a lot when it comes to uh.
Supporting the women employment at Mastercard, but also as owners of SMEs and as employees in other places.
But yeah, progressing women through the corporate ladder, progressing women on SMEs, and we've launched recently here in Saudi Arabia Her voice, which is a podcast dedicated to showcasing successful women.
Their best practices that they can share with other women so that they can learn from each other because you know, very unique challenges.
And on the other hand, we've been working with schools and we've launched the Girls for Tech initiative, global initiative, about 65 countries globally, about 7 million students, girls impacted positively, where we've integrated with the school STEMs program to talk about and share knowledge about AI tech programming, things like that to enable.
Girls at that young age, 8 to 16 years old, with the right skills and knowledge, so that when they graduate into the workplace or you know, decide to open up or start up their own businesses, they are well.
That's definitely something I want to keep my eye on.
And before we let you go, I would love to hear from your perspective, what are the predictions or trends should we be watching from this region or globally?
Welcome to one of the most exciting parts of the world.
The Middle East and GCC and Saudi Arabia.
Today are Leading when it comes to innovation, leading when it comes to AI, and we're very excited to be part of that ecosystem.
The leadership of this part of the world has set very ambitious goals.
They are already overachieving them and stretching everybody in the ecosystem, which is fantastic, and to to grow and evolve and lead and adapt and be early adapters.
If you take, you know, the topic that we just touched on, women inclusion in this part of the world, specifically Saudi Arabia, has been a fantastic story.
And it was one of the elements of the, uh, vision 2030 for Saudi, and this was one that was overachieved.
So, um, and, and long strides have been made.
So fantastic work going there.
So if at all.
There is a lot of exciting things that are worthwhile happening here in the region, and we're very excited to be part of it.
Yes, you can certainly feel that energy.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you.
Thank you for having me.
I really appreciate it.
