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Maria Medvedeva
Managing Director, Middle East
Skyro
Maria Medvedeva is a preeminent global executive and board director who has spent over two decades architecting financial infrastructure across the USA and MENA. She currently serves as Managing Director, Middle East, at Skyro, a Bahrain-based fintech expanding financial access across emerging markets.
A trailblazer in the MENA payments landscape, Maria was the first woman to lead Mastercard Saudi Arabia as Country Manager. During a critical period when the region's digital payment infrastructure was being built from the ground up, she drove the organization to market dominance and established a foundation for sustained market leadership in the Kingdom. Throughout her career, she has secured tens of millions in funding, overseen billions in transactions, and pioneered the deployment of AI-driven solutions in fraud detection and credit scoring long before they became industry standards.
Speaking at SFF 2026
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3:30–3:45pmThu 19 NovIgnite StageHall 5, Singapore EXPOOpen
Technology Rewiring
Corridors, Not Countries: Why the Next Fintech Map Runs Gulf-Asia-Africa - Powered by Skyro
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Maria MedvedevaManaging Director, Middle EastSkyro
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Ronit GhoseIndustry Fellow - Centre for Finance, Technology and RegulationCambridge Judge Business School
About this session
Trade, capital and talent are flowing along new South-South corridors, and the fintech map is being redrawn across the Gulf, Asia and Africa. This podcast-style conversation unpacks what scales across these markets, what must be rebuilt locally, and how to build the trusted networks that make emerging corridors work.
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