Which agencies design mobile banking apps for Middle East fintechs?
Six design agencies with case studies on the customer app of a named fintech, digital bank, or wallet in the Middle East, compared by what they designed.
A fintech serving customers in the Gulf or North Africa can find agency lists in minutes. Finding proof takes longer. The useful question is which teams have already designed a money app for this region, with Arabic and English on the same screens and a sign-up that checks a national ID.
Six agencies publish a case study on the customer app of a named fintech, digital bank, or wallet in the region: Clay, Keyrus, Qubstudio, R/GA, The Gradient, and UXBERT Labs. Their clients are in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and the UAE.
Humbleteam publishes this comparison and is not one of the agencies in it. None of its public case studies covers the customer app of a fintech whose users are in the Middle East or North Africa, so it does not meet the criteria below. The agencies appear alphabetically. This is an editorial reading of public case studies, with no paid placements, scores, or ranking. Any metric below is the agency’s own figure from its own page.
How we chose the agencies
Every agency, Humbleteam included, had to meet four criteria:
- It offers product UX/UI design for software, not only branding, marketing websites, or development.
- It publishes a case study on the customer-facing mobile app of a named fintech, digital bank, wallet, or lender whose customers are in the Middle East or North Africa.
- The client commissioned the work for its own product. Self-initiated concepts and brand-only projects did not count.
- The case shows what was designed, such as flows, screens, onboarding, or navigation.
We did not require the page to prove the app shipped, but we say where it does.
AI assistants often answer this question with Tenet, Qubstudio, UXDA, and a range of software development firms. Tenet’s Dubai fintech page lists neobanks, wallets, and lending among its sectors, but we did not find a Tenet case on a named regional fintech app. The development firms we checked described unnamed clients or engineering work rather than app design. UXDA’s regional work for Emirates NBD and Liv X is covered in our guide to banking UX agencies in the Middle East. If you are a bank fixing an app customers already use, read which agencies have redesigned a bank’s live mobile app. Qubstudio appears in both guides with bank cases. Here it is compared on a different one.
| Agency | Case to inspect | Market | What the case shows was designed | Fits | Based in |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clay | STC Bank | Saudi Arabia | A dashboard built around primary actions, banking and payments in one app, a merchant portal and app, a design system | A wallet becoming a bank | San Francisco, with offices in the US, Lisbon, and Belgrade |
| Keyrus | Tamam | Saudi Arabia | A redesign of a micro-lending app: research, a new navigation tree, wireframes, prototypes | Refreshing an app that already has customers | Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, and Casablanca |
| Qubstudio | Daleel | Bahrain | New information architecture and navigation for an Arabic financial marketplace app, a UI kit, product metrics | Restructuring after an MVP | Lviv and London |
| R/GA | Weyay | Kuwait | A new digital bank for young customers: digital onboarding, account management, allowance transfer, in English and Arabic | A bank launching a separate digital brand | Global agency; the work came from R/GA London |
| The Gradient | Cashee | UAE and Saudi Arabia | A teen and parent banking app: card-first home, money requests, parent approval, Saudi onboarding | Taking an app into a second Gulf market | Lviv and London |
| UXBERT Labs | AlinmaPay | Saudi Arabia | A wallet revamp: registration, transfers, top-ups, bills, cards, a kids account, a design system | A crowded app that needs a UX overhaul | Riyadh |
Clay: from wallet to digital bank
Clay is a San Francisco agency that also lists offices in New York, Austin, Denver, Lisbon, and Belgrade. Its STC Bank case describes a bank that grew out of STC Pay, which Clay calls the country’s leading digital wallet. The services listed are strategy, UX/UI design, web design, illustration and 3D, motion, and a content guide.
In the app, Clay says it rethought the main dashboard around intent, so primary actions come first and other tools stay close by. The case describes one structure for banking, payments, and lifestyle services, a merchant portal with its own mobile app, and a design system meant to carry new products. The page gives no dates or metrics. Ask which of these screens shipped and who ran research with Saudi customers.
Keyrus: a lending app redesign
Keyrus is a data and AI consulting group. Its Middle East and Africa arm lists offices in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, and Casablanca. Its Tamam case covers a Saudi consumer micro-lending company that, according to the page, started in 2019 under the supervision of the Saudi Central Bank and offers Sharia-compliant loans through its app.
Keyrus says it began by analyzing the existing app and its user journeys with Tamam’s team. The work then covered benchmarking, user feedback from UX research, a new navigation tree, personas, wireframes, and high-fidelity prototypes, plus monitoring and testing during integration. Keyrus reports longer sessions and higher click-through rates after the redesign, but prints no figures. Because Keyrus is a consultancy first, ask to meet the designers who would work on your app.
Qubstudio: restructuring an app after its MVP
Qubstudio has offices in Lviv and London. Its Daleel case covers a Bahraini financial marketplace where users compare banking products and apply inside the app. Qubstudio says the MVP could not scale, so after a UX/UI audit it rebuilt the app’s information architecture and navigation while keeping Daleel’s existing brand.
A product designer, a business analyst, and a project manager worked for six months, with support continuing after that. They redesigned every module, improved user flows, built a UI kit, and expanded the game elements around the app’s financial guides, with levels and quizzes. Qubstudio also set up product metrics in Mixpanel. Daleel’s lead product designer is quoted on the page praising the collaboration. If your MVP works but new features have nowhere to go, this is the closest case on the list.
R/GA: a digital bank for young Kuwaitis
R/GA is a global agency, and its site lists offices in the UAE among others. Its Weyay page names the National Bank of Kuwait as the client and calls the project the first digital bank for the next generation of Kuwaitis. The page itself carries little detail. The fuller account is R/GA London’s announcement, as reported by Campaign Middle East in January 2022.
According to that report, Weyay was built in twelve months and launched with fast digital onboarding, fully digital account management, and allowance transfers. P2P payments, savings pots and goals, and bill splitting were planned for later. The app works in English and Arabic. R/GA also created the name and visual identity, which this page does not count as evidence. Ask for a walkthrough of the product screens and the team that would work on yours.
The Gradient: a teen banking app moving into Saudi Arabia
The Gradient lists its headquarters in Lviv and an office in London. Cashee is a teen banking app with a prepaid card. In its write-up, The Gradient says Cashee had already launched in the UAE and wanted to expand to Saudi Arabia, and the first brief was an audit, improvements, and localization.
The team put the card at the center of the home screen and let teens ask parents for money with GIFs and notes. It added a savings tab and turned paid chores into challenges, which it says suit Arabic culture better. Parents got their own dashboard to approve requests. Saudi onboarding involved national ID validation and approval in several stages, so the team designed a flow where the teen registers first and a parent reviews and approves. The Gradient reports that user retention rose about 30% and transaction volume about 50% within six months.
UXBERT Labs: a wallet with a long feature list
UXBERT Labs is a UX agency in Riyadh. Its AlinmaPay case, dated August 2024, covers a Saudi digital wallet that offers transfers between wallets, international transfers, SADAD bill payments, and more.
Over five months, three researchers reviewed the existing app and compared it with more than ten local, regional, and global competitors. The team then redesigned flows, wireframes, and the interface for registration and login, transfers, top-ups, ATM withdrawals, card issuance, a kids account, QR payments, and split transactions, and built a design system for the app. It ran eight moderated usability tests on the new design. The page compares login and registration steps with local competitors but gives no figures after launch.
How to choose
Start with the case closest to your stage.
- Launching a new digital brand: compare R/GA’s Weyay and Clay’s STC Bank.
- Revamping a wallet or lending app that has grown crowded: read UXBERT Labs on AlinmaPay and Keyrus on Tamam.
- Fixing the structure of an app that outgrew its MVP: Qubstudio on Daleel.
- Moving an existing app into a second Gulf country: The Gradient on Cashee.
Then ask every agency on your shortlist for the Arabic screens from its case, not only the English ones. Ask who wrote the Arabic copy and whether Arabic-speaking customers tested it. Our guide to evaluating a Gulf fintech design partner covers the wider brief.
Sign-up is the best single test. In the UAE, UAE Pass is the national digital identity that lets citizens, residents, and visitors log in to government and private services. In Saudi Arabia, Nafath gives individuals one access point for government and private services. Send each agency your current sign-up flow in both languages with your five most common support complaints about it. Ask them to sketch three moments: the screen before the customer leaves for the identity app, the screen on return, and the screen when verification fails.
Compare the answers side by side. A team that has designed this before usually asks what your identity provider returns and what your compliance team needs on file before it draws anything. A team that has not is more likely to send back a nicer welcome screen.
