Alona Shevtsova of Sends contributes to MEBIS 2026 payments innovation panel in Dubai

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Sends chief executive Alona Shevtsova appeared alongside senior banking and payments figures at the Middle East Banking Innovation Summit to assess the trajectory of instant payments, digital wallets and cross-border rails.

On 17 September, figures from banking, fintech and technology assembled at Jumeirah Emirates Towers in Dubai for the 17th instalment of the Middle East Banking Innovation Summit (MEBIS 2026). Alona Shevtsova, CEO of Sends, numbered among the sector specialists on the bill, contributing to the panel discussion “Payment Innovation in Banking: Real Time, Cross Border and Wallet Driven Evolution,” a session that weighed the drivers behind the region’s coming payments cycle.

Also seated on that panel were Hasan Jaber, Deputy CEO at Al Fardan Exchange and CEO of AlfaNow; Ananth Srivatsa, Executive Vice President at RAKBANK; Mohamed Hussein, Head of Banking Solutions Center of Excellence at BANK NXT; Kamran Khan, Executive Director, Product Innovation & Implementation (EMEA) at First Abu Dhabi Bank; Ashish Gupta, Head of Digital, Retail SME and Sales at BankDhofar; and Naveed Minhas, EMEA IPC Payments Leader at IBM.

Participants considered which activities are already delivering demonstrable value to institutions from instant settlement, the manner in which wallets and steadily more linked digital finance ecosystems are resetting what customers anticipate, and what is still needed before payments between countries clear more rapidly and at lower cost.

Interoperability featured prominently in the exchange. Since value now moves in real time between platforms, currencies and jurisdictions, banks and fintech providers must marry incumbent banking systems to newly built payment rails while preserving security, compliance obligations and operational resilience.

“The future of payments will not be defined by a single technology or payment method. The real opportunity is in connecting the ecosystem around the customer. Real-time payments, wallets and cross-border infrastructure need to work together so that moving money becomes simpler for the user, while the technology, compliance and risk infrastructure behind that experience continues to evolve,” observed Alona Shevtsova, chief executive of Sends.

The Dubai contribution follows a series of international industry platforms on which Alona Shevtsova has spoken during 2026. Earlier in the year she joined expert panels held at PAY360 in London, one addressing agentic AI applied to AML and KYC, another the way embedded finance is developing, and she also took part in Riyadh discussions covering digital finance, blockchain, risk and AI.

Her appearance equally signals the widening reach of Sends across the Middle East financial ecosystem, in a market that continues to commit capital to instant payment rails, digital banking and emerging approaches to cross-border financial services.

The summit attracts banking executives at C-level together with technologists and innovators based throughout the Middle East. Subjects on the 2026 agenda extend from intelligent automation and AI, digital banking and payments innovation through to embedded finance, open banking, data strategy, cybersecurity and the financial infrastructure of the next generation.

About Sends

Sends, a financial technology company based in the UK, offers payment services to corporate and retail customers trading at home and abroad. Authorisation as an Electronic Money Institution has been granted by the Financial Conduct Authority to Smartflow Payments Limited, which trades as Sends.