Faisal Toukan

CEO & Co-Founder, Ziina

Search every verified Faisal Toukan interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Faisal Toukan, CEO and co-founder of Ziina, said in a May 2025 interview with the JIMCO Technology Fund that the company’s vision is to bring financial freedom to every person in the Middle East, serving both individuals managing daily finances and businesses seeking to scale. He described Ziina as a platform that connects users with card schemes like Visa and Mastercard, the Central Bank of the UAE, and partner banks through software designed to provide a "10x experience." Toukan noted that the region is well-suited for fintech due to a young, tech-savvy population and high mobile penetration, and he argued that investors should back Middle Eastern fintech players because a "perfect storm" is enabling financial freedom. Toukan stated that Ziina has seen exponential growth, with user base and annual volumes increasing nearly tenfold year over year for the past four years, and that the company is evolving from a payments provider into a full-service financial stack. He credited early investor JIMCO with showing high conviction from the start and described the partnership as combining Ziina’s agility and technology with JIMCO’s legacy reputation. Toukan also emphasized that Ziina is licensed by the Central Bank of the UAE, a process he said involved prolonged regulatory work to gain trust, and that the company maintains quarterly reporting standards to prioritize customer safety before product innovations.