Telecommunications groups across the world have spent years exploring how their enormous customer networks might translate into financial-services businesses. In the UAE, etisalat money is demonstrating what that convergence can look like at significant scale.
Led by Melike Kara Tanrikulu, etisalat money has developed from a digital-wallet proposition into one of the country's largest fintech platforms. More than two million customers now use the application for activities including payments, cards and international remittances, while more than 1.76 million cards had been issued by the end of 2025. Transaction value and remittance value both increased approximately 2.8 times during 2025.
The crucial development in 2026 has been its expansion beyond payments.
Approval for a Finance Company licence from the Central Bank of the UAE opened the path for etisalat money to move into lending, allowing the platform to combine transactions and credit within the same digital relationship. That represents an important shift: etisalat money is no longer simply helping customers transfer or spend funds but increasingly participating in how they access and manage capital.
Its product expansion reflects that strategy. In April 2026, etisalat money introduced digital gold investment in partnership with SafeGold, allowing customers to purchase 24-karat gold from as little as AED 10. A month later, it expanded its salary proposition for UAE businesses, incorporating Wage Protection System compliance, salary processing, IBAN accounts and cards within a single digital platform.
For Tanrikulu, the strategic advantage is significant. etisalat money sits within one of the region's largest technology groups, giving it access to brand recognition, digital infrastructure and an enormous addressable customer ecosystem.
Yet its ambitions increasingly resemble those of a financial super-app rather than a telecom-linked wallet. Payments create engagement; payroll can make the platform part of the customer's monthly financial cycle; lending deepens the relationship; investment products expand the share of financial activity taking place inside the ecosystem.
The result is one of the UAE's most interesting experiments in embedded finance at scale.
As telecom, banking, payments and digital identity increasingly intersect, the boundaries separating industries are becoming less meaningful. Under Tanrikulu, etisalat money is positioning itself directly within that convergence—and demonstrating how a telecommunications ecosystem can become an increasingly important financial-services distribution platform.